Here are the pictures from our second day in the Rockies, and my description of it. Again, the text should pretty much go along with the pictures. The first 156 (!) pictures are from the Lake O’Hara region where we hiked up to Lake Oesa and down again, then there are 10 of Lake Louise and 20 of Moraine Lake.

[tags]rockies, lake o’hara, lake oesa, yoho national park, lake louise, moraine lake[/tags]

I’ve upgraded to a Flickr Pro account so that I could upload all the pictures from the trip. Obviously I won’t bother posting some of them (some turned out blurry, and Nellie likes to take pictures of our hotel rooms that I’m sure aren’t interesting to anyone else). The sets are broken up into days: you can see pictures from day 1 here. My description of the day is here; the pictures pretty much follow along in sequence.

I had to scale them all down so that uploading wouldn’t take all night. If anyone wants an original version (most were in the 2800 x 1600 range) email me.

[tags]rockies, lake louise, kicking horse river, emerald lake, moraine lake[/tags]

YYC has big cushy easy chairs next to the gates. Nellie and I, having arrived early (natch) have scored two of them and are lounging as I type this.

[tags]calgary airport, comfy chairs[/tags]

We took our time getting out of the Banff Springs this morning, and stopped in Canmore for lunch at a highly-recommended place called Crazyweed Kitchen. Our bellies full of good food we drove east and left the mountains (and one last herd of bighorned sheep) behind. We’ve just now arrived in Calgary and have checked into our sweet-ass room at the Westin. The new tower has nicer rooms, plasma TVs, and so on…we’re considering not leaving between now and tomorrow morning.

[tags]calgary, rockies, canmore, crazyweed[/tags]

Last night on the way down to one of the many restaurants at the hotel, we saw a herd of elk grazing just beyond the door near the river. I guess they’re everywhere, not just on the lawn.

Today was for relaxing. I collected my Globe and Mail from the hotel room doorknob, checked my email and watched a little TV while Nellie slept in. We went out for some (rather unpleasant) breakfast and then drove to Lake Minnewanka. It was raining so we held off on any hikes, but coming around the lake we saw a whole herd (flock?) of big-horned sheep strolling casually along the road. Of course, loads of cars and a bus full of Japanese tourists had stopped to get pictures, as did we. We drew the line at leaving the car to chase them down the road, though, and continued on to Two Jack Lake. It was another very pretty lake, but nothing spectacular.

Then, on the road back into Banff, just a few metres from the Trans-Canada, we saw a coyote in a field. I should clarify that: Nellie saw something, and then had trouble articulating what she saw. I hadn’t actually seen anything yet; I just heard “Bird…bunny…thingy…COYOTE!!” Once I snapped a few pictures and took a quick video I broke up laughing at what she’d yelled.

We decided to zip up Tunnel Mountain and have a look at the few hoodoos just outside of town. There seemed to be a small wedding ceremony happening, but it was soon overrun by more busloads of tourists. We zipped down the other side of the mountain, drove around toward the hotel and took some more pictures of Bow Falls and the Spray River. By then it was raining again so we explored the hotel a little, grabbed some lunch and watched a movie (Clerks 2) to kill some time. Later in the afternoon it cleared up a bit and we drove into town to do some exploring, getting back just in time to catch Montreal’s first game of the season and then head downstairs for dinner and a drink or two.
[tags]banff, rockies, lake minnewanka, coyote[/tags]

Once again we got breakfast from the kickass Bear Paw bakery, and got some bread to make sandwiches on the road. A quick fill up at the tanks and we were on our way south along the Icefields Parkway.

After a couple of quick stops at lookouts, we stopped at a place called Beauty Creek. We set out for a two-hour hike up a hill, alongside the creek, past a series of waterfalls. Maybe they were waterfalls, maybe they were chutes, maybe they were cascades, I’m not sure. All I know is that there were loads of them, and they were beautiful. We reached the top of the trail after about an hour, but decided not to press on since we could see bear(?) tracks on the trail and we were completely alone up there. Still it was a great hike and a nice change from the parade of mountain scenery. We got back to the car and continued on our way.

After that we hit a bunch of sights we bypassed on the drive north: we stopped for a quick bite while we gazed at Tangle Falls on the side of the highway, drove past the Big Bend to see the Weeping Walls, hiked down the Mistaya Canyon and stopped to have a look at both the Bow Glacier and Hector Lake. Around Lake Louise we cut over to the Bow Valley Parkway and drove to Johnstone Canyon. It was good, especially ’cause you could walk through a cave to view the waterfall up close, but the plethora of tourists and easy walkway made us long for the hike along Beauty Creek.

After that came the wildlife tour: a few minutes down the parkway we saw some deer on the other side of the divided road, so Nellie swung the car around. I snapped a few pictures before they took off, but now we were headed the wrong way. We drove back up to the split, but on the way we saw something small and black on the side of the road. I thought it was a bear cub, but then we realized it was a wolf. I snapped a quick picture as fast as I could, and I think we got it. I’ll know later.

When we arrived in Banff, finding the way through the hotel complex was more complicated than the town itself. We finally got checked in to our room, I found the internet connection, Nellie found the bathtub, we saw the elk on the lawn, and I wrote this up. Time for dinner!

[tags]jasper, bear paw bakery, beauty creek, mistaya canyon, bow valley parkway, banff, fairmont banff springs, elk[/tags]

We’ve just arrived in Banff, and I plan to write up the day’s events shortly, but I had to share one quick story: as we walked into our room at the Banff Springs the first thing we did was look at the view. It’s a nice one: we can see mountains (obviously), some of the town, the Bow River and even Bow Falls. What we also saw was an elk wandering around the lawn and eating the flowers, standing next to the Canadian flag.

An old CP hotel, the Rocky Mountains, an elk and the Maple Leaf…it just doesn’t get much more Canucky than that.

More later. Must unwind.

[tags]banff, fairmont banff springs, elk, bow river, bow falls, rocky mountains, canadian flag, you’re a good canadian[/tags]