Canadian Rockies – August 28th to September 1st

From Vancouver we had a rather large drive ahead of us to the Canadian Rocky Mountains, so we headed off later than planned as usual, and drove pretty much all day to the town of Golden at the edge of the Rockies. Saw some pretty nice scenery on the way, but also a lot of highway….

Rediscovering roll-ups :)

Views of the Rocky Mountains

We spent the night at a campground in Golden, and headed to the touristy town of Lake Louise the next day. The actual Lake Louise and Lake Moraine are incredibly beautiful, and it was very easy to see why there are so many people there! Although we didn’t spend a whole lot of time there, it’s definitely a place we’d like to spend more time at, hopefully within the next few months before winter hits and when there are many less tourists (then more in winter when everything is frozen and/or snow covered!).

Lake Louise is a gorgeous milky green colour, or was the day we were there at least – the colour changes slightly all the time apparently. The lake is glacier fed, has views up to a massive glacier/glaciers behind it, and is freezing, but oh so beautiful! There are lots of hikes around there, but after deciding we’d definitely be coming back, we ended up just going on a pretty short one up to a lookout over the lake, which was awesome – we also managed to see the not so common sight of a porcupine asleep in a tree!

Lake Louise

Lawrie at Lake Louise - glaciers behind

Porcupine sleeping in a tree!

Lake Louise and the Fairmont Chateau

Then we headed to Moraine Lake, also in the Lake Louise area, which was somehow even more spectacular! This lake also changes colour, but was an amazing bright blue colour from above, and less blue but very reflective from the lake shore. There are heaps of hiking trails around Moraine Lake, but again as we’d decided to come back (and maybe get a little more sleep beforehand…), as well as the fact that it’s illegal to do most of the trails with less than 4 people, staying less than 3m apart at all times, with at least one person armed with bear spray, we bypassed most of the hikes! Next time though…

So it seems that grizzly bears are pretty common around the area! Needless to say we didn’t’ see any, but there is apparently one around the area that is attacking the slightly smaller black bears! Which I imagine would still fare much better than a pretty much defenceless human! And around the lake shore of Lake Louise there has been a cougar (mountain lion) stalking people on the very crowded trail around the lake, which is kind of… interesting!

Moraine Lake at water level

Stunningly blue Moraine Lake from the nearby 'Rockpile'

Fat little chipmunk in front of the lake

Bear warnings/restrictions sign...

Cute little pika

From Lake Louise we headed past the more touristy town of Banff to the little town of Canmore, where people actually live and work and the sole purpose of the town isn’t just for tourists… We had an awesome and massive dinner at Boston Pizza, as well as a thoroughly unnecessary but delicious smores pizza for dessert… Then retired to a quiet local street to spend the night, as the Safeway car park was a little small and crowded.

We checked out a few of the many little shops in Canmore, then went to check out some bike trails. After we made our way to the Canmore Nordic Centre (many cross country biking and skiing trails, built for the 1988 Olympics) it was early afternoon, so although the trails sounded fantastic for us both, it would be more worth coming back another time to make the most of a whole day there!

So we headed to Banff for the rest of the afternoon, where we, together with many many other tourists, wandered through heaps of little shops, including shops of tourist goods that all looked the same after about 2 shops, and managed to purchase a half price snow jacket each… We discovered Squish’s Sandwich Cellar (or a similar sort of name), which made for an awesome lunch, and then retired to the hot springs for the evening – fantastic way to spend the day, plus it meant we got a shower… J

We found a campground on the way back to Lake Louise, and headed to the Lake in the morning, discovering that the end of summer there can be colder than our winter! It was -1ºC at about 8am, and there was ice on the wooden deck around the lake… So we gathered that summer was probably coming to a thorough end…

View from part of the Icefields Parkway

Different looking Lake Louise in the morning

Freezing!

From Lake Louise we headed up the beautiful Icefields Parkway to Jasper, in the Banff and Jasper National Parks. We didn’t see any of the wildlife that they say to watch out for along the way, but we saw some more incredibly blue and reflective glacial lakes, and some massive glaciers and mountains! This road is advertised as the most beautiful drive in the world (as I’m sure are a few others…), not entirely sure if that’s the case, but it sure was beautiful!

Reflections on Bow Lake

Peyto Lake, with its wolf head shape

One of the many awesome glaciers along the Icefields Parkway

Part of the Icefields Parkway, between the mountains

The Athabasca Glacier, part of the massive Columbia Icefield

The next glacier, looking slightly more beautiful

Crowds at the Columbia Icefield

Although we planned on spending more time in the town of Jasper at the northern end of the Icefields Parkway, and visiting the nearby Maligne Lake, it was Saturday night and it turns out there are no meetings in Jasper, so we headed to the nearby town of Hinton…

Back to Vancouver – August 26th to 28th

Well, back in Vancouver again! And once again, not for long enough! It was great to catch up with Ben & Anna again, and little Finley! We planned to only stay there for one night before heading east towards the Canadian Rockies, but of course that quickly migrated into 2 nights…

From the ferry terminal we headed to the nearest Starbucks to find some free internet, and found that regardless of the cloud covered mountains, it would be more worth heading up Grouse Mountain that day than any other!

On the way over to Grouse Mountain we drove through a little bit of Stanley Park (as Central Park is to New York city), and saw a scary number of bike riders, including a few tandem bikes and bike trailers for kids, and checked out a few totem poles in a rather crowded area of the park – they were pretty cool!

Floating log storage in Vancouver

BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, as we drove past

Some of the Vancouver skyline, from Stanley Park

Some of the totem poles in Stanley Park

So we decided to do the Grouse Grind, which made me realise just how awfully unfit I was, after 2.5 months of doing virtually nothing energetic! The Grouse Grind is a very steep walk up the mountain to the ski field area at the top, rather than catching the aerial tramway/gondola. It is only about 3km, although it definitely felt that long already when only ¼ of the way through… It goes up by nearly 1km in that distance, and is almost entirely stairs – apparently over 2800 stairs. They have a yearly race up here, and people buy timers during the year to track themselves – the record is just over 23 minutes, but we (well, me, with Lawrie waiting for me…) took about 1.5 hours). We also discovered just how humid it was, and it started raining, but looking back it was definitely worth it J (definitely wasn’t so sure about it at the time though!). After drying off a little, and as the clouds set in to stay at the top, we realised just how inadequately dressed for the weather we were (a rain jacket doesn’t really cut it when it feels like it’s going to snow!).

Nicole getting ground out by the Grouse Grind

Looking up part of the Grouse Grind

There are some pretty awesome things to see at the top of Grouse Mountain – it’s one of the 3 local ski fields in winter, but definitely a big tourist attraction in summer too – on a nice day you can see most of Vancouver city from the top, and so there are helicopter rides from there, mountain zip lines, a massive windmill at the top that you can go up into (all for an extra cost of course), and then a few free things which we did:

A birds of prey show, where we saw up close some pretty cool birds – a 1 year old bald eagle (only the adults have a white head, after about 5 years, so this one was speckly and brown) with a 6 foot wingspan; 2 hawks (where the females direct the males to do the hunting for them, and they have a super impressive dive to get the prey. One of the hawks flew up and up, and up… and didn’t come back, so we were warned to call out if we saw it, to protect the next birds in the show… And the other flew really fast between the heads of people in the show audience, a little too close for comfort!); a falcon, which put on some impressive flying speed (they get up to 300km/h, which is crazy!) chasing after a fake bird the trainer was holding; and a great horned owl, which was really cute but not quite so impressive, apart from its hearing and eyesight J

Massive young bald eagle

Bald eagle

Hawk

Great horned owl

Falcon

We checked out the grizzly bear wildlife refuge, where they keep 2 fully grown (need I say GIGANTIC?!) grizzlies that they rescued as orphaned cubs – at first they were just sleeping hiding in the woods, but then we saw them up really close, which was very exciting!! They. Were. Massive. As were their claws…

First sighting of the grizzly bears at Grouse Mountain - thankfully it improved from here!

One of the grizzlies finally surfaced :)

Grinder and Coola

Do not mess with the grizzlies...

Then there was a lumberjack show, which although a little over the top, was hilarious, and worth every moment – also pretty impressive in terms of skills!

Kiwi lumberjack

Axe throwing

Chainsaw carving

Not sure what it was called, but very impressive and quick climbing!

Log rolling

We went to check out the wolves in the wildlife refuge at the base of the mountain, but it seems they didn’t want to see us, and were more interested in sleeping. The people there before us waited a while until one walked past, so we stayed around in hope, but after far too long, Lawrie finally spotted a white wolf sleeping in the woods, and that was the best we got – others said they’re usually walking around and even fighting, right next to the fences, so that was a little disappointing!

Spot the wolf... Thankfully Lawrie did :)

Zoomed in view of the sleeping white wolf

Transport down the mountain - they fit 100 people in there...

We spent some more time adoring Finley back at Ben & Anna’s, and while they went to see the Musical Ride show put on by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Mounties), we didn’t get tickets in advance so took a walk and saw them practising on their matching horses instead!

Finley

Royal Canadian Mounted Police in full uniform

Then it was once again time to get on the road…