We got to Victoria, Canada last night, but got a good start this AM.  We stayed at another divey hotel, but really cheap since CAD is at a very beneficial exchange rate against the USD.  It's better to be unemployed in Canada these days, eh..?

Day 1

Caroline was checking her email first thing in the AM.  She's just unable to let go of some things.  I get a lot of grief about doing email and all, but I'm not alone - for the record..  :-)

The first thing we did was head off to "The Castle" which is really called Craigdarroch, which was the home of a coal and railroad baron named Dunsmuir.  It was one of those classic stories of rags to riches in the first generation.  Then squandering and frittering away of the fortune over the course of the next two generations. 

Eventually the castle was rescued by a group that wanted to restore it, collect all the old furniture, art, and household goods, and then set up a society to keep after it all.  They've done a terrific job, the place is definitely worth seeing.

Our dear Princess Lisa needed some sundries, and since they are so much cheaper in Canada, she decided to stock up a bit... 

After the castle we hustled off to the downtown near the water.  There was a fair going on at the time, and the fact that it was Canada Day (a national holiday celebrating the divestiture from England) lot's of people were out and about. 

We decided to see the Parliament building.  Victoria is the provincial capital and has the most government per capita in the whole province.  The building is quite fancy since it was built about 100 years ago.  And there is a great act with Queen Victoria and Sir Douglas, who was a big deal in getting the province started government-wise.

We toured the building a bit and even got the see the actual Parliament chambers, as seen above in the second picture.

We felt we needed some refreshments after being exposed to all that government and repaired to the Fairmont Empress' Bengal Lounge to sip some nice drinks and savor some Belgian chocolates.  The pussycat was hanging over the fireplace, and was too good to pass up.

We got tired of the urban experience and headed for the incomparable Butchart Gardens.  Caroline and I had been there before and didn't think twice about going back.  The pictures don't even start to convey how impressive it really is. 

This time the Rose Garden was in full bloom.  When Caroline and I were here previously, it was September, and the roses were far gone.  This time things were quite different.

After the gardens we headed off to the ferry for Vancouver.  This time it was different.  We managed to be the very last car on the ferry without waiting a moment. 

As I said earlier, it's Canada Day.  That means you are supposed to see fireworks.  How could we be in Vancouver and miss the fireworks, we just couldn't. 

Caroline and I have gotten the art of fireworks watching down to a science.  You drive as close as you need to be to see the action and not get blasted by the noise.  You park illegally for the duration of the show, and then get out of dodge in a hurry before the crowds catch up to you.  We can verify this works in Vancouver just as well as SFO, DC, and a number of other towns in the US.

All in all the fireworks were some of the more mediocre ones we've seen in a while.  But the crowd watching was great.  We eventually found a Residence Inn.  This is a big money splurge, but it made Lisa very happy.  Besides, they have underground parking that is behind two locked gates.  With all the stuff in the car, and Vancouver's well deserved reputation as a car break-in town, it was worth the extra scratch.  Besides, it's still only Canadian dollars.

Day 2

We ended up in a Residence Inn, which is pretty far on the ritzy side of things for us.  But, given that Lisa had to sleep on a sleep sofa the previous night, we relented and went for the big bucks.  Also, it has secure underground parking, which is a big deal in Vancouver where cars get broken into with great regularity.  The final point was the laundry.  We were able to do two loads of laundry between the three of us, which makes the rest of the trip so much more enjoyable - with some clean clothes.

We started the day, after all the laundry, the workouts (in the gym), and the breakfast on the patio two floors up, with Granville Island. 

Granville Island is a very pretty little art, craft, and food market located under the bridge that brings you into the city from the south (can't remember it for the life of me).  It's really cute, you can get great food goodies there and the smoked salmon is to die for all over the place.  And then there are all these cutesy shops that Caroline drags me through because I made her go to three maritime museums, which brings her total to three maritime museums for her entire life - And she could be very happy going along without ever having seen a maritime museum...  You get the picture.  It was payback time and I consoled myself with some smoked salmon while trying not to break anything in those glass shops and all.  It's the really hazardous part of the journey as you can see.

But, the reason for this picture, is to get back in the good graces of our dear friend Mickey.  The one in Grenoble that was such a terrific host to us, and whose not very flattering picture ended up on my web site, sort of accidentally on purpose, er, um, well, it's been removed. 

So I saw this shop, thought of Madame Micque, the Rhino Connoisseur, and thought I'd take this opportunity to try a cheap ploy of overt flattery to get back in her good graces.  I'll let you know if it works.

After Granville Island we went, with our delicious goodies to Stanley Park.  This is the THE LARGEST park in any city in North America.  And it has great views from every angle, loads of athletics and aesthetics, and it's a great place to picnic and people watch, which we did.

Stanley Park is named after Lord Stanley, who is also the same Stanley whose name adorns this highest award in hockey.

Parking was a bit of a challenge since it's still Canada Day weekend, and everyone was off.  And lots of people were out in the park on this perfectly wonderful day.  We ended up parking near the horse stables for the horse carriages and noticed this work of art which we dubbed the shoe tree.  No explanation and I wouldn't even hazard a guess, but it's there for everyone to see.

The second picture is the bridge that heads off to Grouse Mountain and Whistler, who's name might be Lion's Head, but we aren't completely sure. 

And finally we saw this great old car with the northern mountains in the background and I couldn't resist the shot.

After Stanley Park and our delightful picnic we started the long drive to Banff.  This is around a 600 mile jaunt, so we had to amuse ourselves for quite some time.  Mount Baker kept looming on the horizon.  It's actually located in the US, but not by much.  We had been trying to see it from Vancouver Island, but it never cleared up enough to do so.  But Caroline captured it while driving along with this red barn somewhere along Canada's Route 1 which is the Trans Canada highway.

Aside from the great scenery along the highway which started from pacific coast lushness to eastern Sierra looking sagebrush and brownness, we got some good radio commentary.  The best one was a description of a Canadian as "..an unarmed American with health care".  It gave us a good chuckle.

We are now ensconced in a new Travelodge motel in Salmon Arm for the night.  We took care of the usual mundane tasks that one does out in the middle of nowhere like buy Lisa a new computer from Dell's online Factory Outlet (we're being frugal since we're unemployed) so she can hit the ground running when she gets home.  And then update the web site - just like any normal tourist does nowadays..  :-)

Tomorrow we hope to make it to Banff.

Day 3

We left Salmon Arm and headed into town for some supplies.  It's always a little surprising to me how much stuff it takes to get two women across a couple hundred miles of mountains. 

As we headed further into the mountains the scenery just got better and better.  This picture is typical of some of the high peaks with snow that we saw, and there are a lot of them.

We were heading for Glacier National Park through Rogers Pass on the Trans Canada Highway.  It's an incredible road for great scenery.

After we reached Glacier National Park we needed to stop for lunch.  Some of those supplies we picked up in Salmon Arm came in very handy.  In this picture I had just eaten a really spicy green olive that we picked up on Granville Island, but I needed to stay posed for the camera, thus the funny face.

We hiked up the Great Glacier trail right after lunch.  It's pretty much a three mile trail that climbs one  thousand feet. 

The first picture is the scene ahead of us across the valley.  Our trail went to the right of the picture.  Caroline consumed a good bit of water since it a "scorcher" as the woman in Salmon Arm promised us it would be.

The second picture is the view behind us, or the return view as we descended. 

The third picture is a river that we crossed going out and coming back.  It's typical of the tributaries that we frequently crossed on our hike.

At many points along the trail we would see wild flowers, this might be a Stickweed.  This is typical of the many groups of the wild flowers that add some real color to the scenes before us.

After our hike we were pretty pooped.  But we had another 50 miles or so to travel.  Fortunately there were lots of vistas like these to keep us occupied.

We got to Lake Louise, which was spectacular.  But we needed accommodations.  This proved to be a tough thing to resolve.  After trying a bunch of places and not finding any vacancies for only slight obscene prices, we went to dinner. 

At the restaurant, which was terrific, we got some suggestions from the waiter, one of which turned out very nicely.  We ended up staying right near Lake Louise in very comfortable digs at the Deer Lodge.

We will be staying in this area for a couple of nights.  But we aren't yet sure where we will be tomorrow night.  I'm sure we'll find something that will work.

Day 4

Today was a big day for touring around the area.  We got to see incredible sights and a lot of game too.  The hotel was as close as you could be to Lake Louise without actually staying at the Fairmont on the lake.  Thus we were able to get a decent start on the first activity.

We started the day by renting a canoe and paddling around Lake Louise.  The water is this incredible turquoise color that comes from what they call a "rock flour" that flows off the glaciers with the runoff.

The second picture is taken from the far end of the lake towards the Fairmont.  It was pretty crowded, but we managed to stay away from the hoards and keep moving.

After the canoeing we headed out towards Jasper.  It's a long way and there is lot's to see.  The first picture is typical of the terrain that we witnessed at every turn in the road.

The second picture is our lunch spot at Bow Lake.  This is another lake with another set of incredible views, which we savored along with our picnic lunch.

This is another glacier that is typical of many that we witnessed.  They are called hanging glaciers generically since they are "hanging" on the tops of the mountains.  You can see the rugged edges, and in the case of this one we actually got to see a small piece of it fall off.  Which happens regularly.

The park service says there are 422 glaciers in the park, and we only got to see about twenty of them.  All of the ones that we saw were dramatically posed and terrific to view and ponder.

We continued towards the Columbia Ice Fields, which is where our hotel is for tonight.  We got lucky and nabbed a room first thing in the morning.  Banff and it's environs are THE MOST visited place in Canada, and we can vouch for the popularity of the place in spite of the high cost of housing.

The Peytos Lake (pronounced pee-toes) turned out to be one of more colorful lakes that we saw.  And the mountains that overlooked the lake was beyond compare. 

The third picture shows the moraine at the end of the lake.  It was so big that even with our great height I was unable to put all of it into the same frame.  There is a picture that shows the glacier reaching 2 km further down into the lake basin.  It has receded quite a bit over the last 100 years.  Depending on who you ask, this is the result of global warming, or it's a natural cycle the Earth in general, and glaciers in particular go through.

We did take a little interpretive trail near this glacier to get more familiar with the terrain, flora, and fauna. Caroline has gotten pretty good at identifying and naming all the wild flowers that have seen.  She even marks the date and place that we spot the ones in her flower guide.  The list of checked off flowers has gotten pretty large.

As we continued north we ran across this Mountain Goat along the side of the road.  It looks like the goat is eating dirt, and that is actually what it's doing.  And it's not just because it's a goat.  There are a lot of salts and minerals the goat needs in this soil. 

As we got closer to the ice fields the scenery got more dramatic.  We were up around 6000 feet now, and the tree line was noticeably lower on the mountains, and the valleys were getting deeper.  The tree line on the south facing hillsides was noticeably higher than the north facing ones.  The difference seemed to be about 1000 feet.

We got the Columbia Ice Fields.  We wanted to check in to make sure we had our room, or actually, the lovelies were concerned since it was so tough to find accommodations.  I snapped this shot with the sun fully on the ice field, and then we continued onto Jasper. 

We continued along the road stopping every so often when something looked too impressive to give a cursory look.  This particular glacier struck us that way.

The Athabaska Falls were tremendous.  The power of the falls hits you in the gut when you feel the wind coming off the falls, or you feel the vibration of the water hitting the rocks below you.

There isn't much you can say about falls like this, you just have to go and experience them for yourself.  I've been to Niagara Falls, which is much larger than this one.  But you can get a lot closer to these, and the water is much colder.  So the wind feels more powerful, and somehow there is more of a sense of impact from the water.  It's a very cool experience.

The pictures show the top of the falls in the first two pictures, the middle channel in the third picture, and the exit channel in the final picture.

We got to Jasper and had dinner.  It was an early dinner for us, but we knew we had to cover a lot of miles to get back to the ice field.  On the way we stopped off at a particular spot that is well known for Mountain Goats.  As luck would have it, a mother and kid were there, and didn't run away when we peered at them and took pictures.

On the way home we saw a lot of wild life.  But none of the pictures came out very well.  We saw a bunch of Elk in various places, one with a calf.  We saw a Coyote, some Deer, and then another bunch of Goats, which you see in the second picture.  They were eating dirt just like all the others that we saw.  

This set of pictures shows some of the scenery that we saw on the way to the hotel as the sun was setting.  It will give you an idea of the scenery we experienced at the end of our day.

One thing that may impact tomorrow is the fact that a Japanese kid fell into a crevasse this afternoon.  We saw a lot of emergency equipment heading south as we went to Jasper, and never saw evidence of a car wreck on the way back.  It wasn't until we got into the hotel that we found out a kid had fallen into the crevasse and died.  He went well off the marked path and just fell into the crevasse while playing around.  When you fall into one you are fully against the ice on two sides of you.  You die from hypothermia in about 45 minutes.  the kid was about sixty feet down.  It took rescuers about 4.5 hours to get the kid's body out, which concluded about an hour before we got to the hotel.  It might be a bit of a media circus tomorrow, but we hope not. 

Day 5

We started the day at The Ice Fields Chalet at the Columbia Ice Fields.  It should be understood that these ice fields comprise several glaciers in the immediate vicinity and then some others that are on the other sides of the nearby mountains.

Our strategy was to get out on the glacier early before all the crowds arrived.  And there was the worry that their might be some media from the death on the ice yesterday.  The media never showed up but the crowds sure did, just after we got back from our tour - and life was good.

We got a regular bus that takes you to the SnowCoach.  This is a special purpose bus that combines all the greatest aspects of the old yellow bus that you used to go to school with and monster trucks.  I can assure you that I didn't come close to fitting in those seats.

The glacier itself, in this case the Athabasca Glacier, lived up to it's promise.  Even after we had been staring at it across the way from our hotel for a while.  There is something very powerful and mysterious about it.  You know it's moving and that it can kill you if you goof, but it's also very striking. 

The edges of the glacier are the most dangerous in the flat areas.  The vertical parts are the most dangerous of all.  The dangers are mostly in the form of crevasses, which can be covered by snow bridges that melt in the warm weather.  When you walk on it, you are gone, from sight, possibly forever.

We didn't get anywhere near the edge of the glacier.  We stayed in the middle where the ice is almost 1000 feet thick.  The only danger you run into on this part of the glacier might be the spiral wells.  Basically water runs through the ice and melts a big hole.  Some of them can be hundreds of feet wide and deep.  But they can be smaller and then pose more danger since you might not see it before you fall into it since they can be covered with a snow bridge like a crevasse.  I guess that's why we paid for the SnowCoach so that we'd know someone already checked it all out for us.

The second picture shows how blue the ice can get.  The dark spots are dirt and dust that gets blown onto the ice or are picked up as particles in the snow flakes.

The third picture shows the Andromeda Glacier that overlooks the Athabasca Glacier.

After we finished with the glaciers we headed east towards Banff.  We stopped at the town near Lake Louise to get some picnic fixings and lunched at a nearby spot.

We had tried to take a number of pictures of Elk that we had seen in the parks over the last couple of days.  Finally, we rounded a bend in the road and ran into a group of Elk right on the road and got some shots.

The Elk looked very healthy.  The antlers still had a lot of down on them, which will be rubbed off as they get closer to the mating season in the fall.

We got to Banff in mid afternoon.  The town looks like a prosperous ski town.  It's the most chic place that we had seen anywhere near the parks.  And it also has it's springs.  This is the only geothermally active place that we had seen in the parks.  And it was a resort for a long time, but isn't now. 

This picture is the underground spring that used to be THE spot for the health giving waters.  There is a small pool behind Caroline and Lisa.  I just liked the light and the texture of the ceiling of the cave itself.

We went to visit the Banff Springs Hotel which is the most luxurious of all the Canadian Rail hotels in the parks.  It is huge and wonderfully kept, and modeled after the chateau of France.  We had a drink in the Ramsay Lounge before heading to our own hotel across town.

We had a terrific dinner where we ate a bunch of Venison, Caribou, and various other delicacies.  There is something to be said for these chic ski towns, the restaurants are a cut above.

Tomorrow is likely to be our last day in Canada and it will be a high mileage day.  We have started to look at the maps of Montana.  At least my Cell phone will work again, but everything will cost more.  And we are starting to talk about getting Lisa a flight home.  There are pluses and minuses to getting back to the US.  I think we are very much looking forward to it.

Day 6

This was our last day in Canada, and it was a high mileage day.  We went from Banff to St. Mary, MT.

We started by visiting the Gondola on Banff.  It goes to the top of Sulphur Mountain which overlooks the town of Banff, the Bow River Valley, and the surrounding area behind these valleys.  It's also the site of some cosmic ray data gathering which proves that all the weird science does not live in California. 

The top of the Gondola is about 7800 feet.  There is a walkway and a couple of viewing stations.  There are lots of placards explaining all sorts of useless stuff.  I thought it was much more interesting to listen to people comments like, "This is really high", or "Where are souvenirs".  Clearly it was very moving to them.

We continued on down the road to Calgary.  It was the start of The Calgary Stampede which seemed like an event for cowboys by a lot of people that seemed enamored with cowboy activities.  None of that really appealed to us at all.  But I needed to change the oil in the car so we stopped in town.  We managed to get the oil changed while we had lunch at the Lazy Loaf & Kettle, which was right next door to the MinuteLube.  You just can't ask for more than that.  And with the exchange rate, it was a lot cheaper than getting it done at home.

We did manage to see the ski jumps from the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.   And then we headed for the seriously wind blown plains.   We saw a lot of wheat fields and the occasional red barn or two.  It was the kind of driving that really wears you out.  The road drops off the horizon in a perfectly straight line, and the wind tries to blow you into the ditch if you dare to take your hand off the wheel.

But all was not lost.  We happened upon the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre.  Now, it has to be understood that we are somewhat drawn to the really ludicrous.  And we did pass up the Trees of Mystery in northern California.  We also passed up the Corn Maze in British Columbia.  But we absolutely couldn't pass this up. 

This is a place where the Indians chased a bunch of buffalo off a cliff.  It was a hunting technique and they had been doing it for thousands of years.  We thought the name had to do with the Buffalo hitting the ground and smashing their heads.  But it was even better and it may be the oldest known candidate for the Darwin Awards. 

One young  Indian brave long ago wanted front row seats at the hunt.  He watched from directly under the cliff.  As the hundreds of buffalo piled up around him he got squished by the bodies and his head got smashed in.  Thus the name of the place.

There is a large mostly underground facility explaining in very somber terms how there are 12 meters of buffalo bones under the cliff from all the hunts.  And there is even a movie that reenacts the event so you can appreciate it in gory detail. 

The net result was that Caroline had a buffalo steak that night for dinner, and we all enjoyed knowing that it never got run off a cliff to end up on the plate.

We continued on our way to Cardston, which has quite a history.  It was named after one of Brigham Young's sons-in-law, Charles Ora Card (his third wife was a daughter of Brigham Young).  Card took ten Mormon families to Canada in 1886 to start a colony where polygamy wasn't banned, as it had become in the US. 

His original log cabin is still there right on Main Street for all to see.  We stopped briefly to try and get rid of the last of our Canadian money, so we didn't stay long and we didn't ask a lot of questions.

Caroline was thoroughly intrigued by the fact that the smallest towns seemed to have at least one Chinese restaurant that served both kinds of food, Chinese and Western.  We never got up the guts to try one of these places, mostly because we had Lisa (our Princess) with us.

We got through the border without a hitch.  I thought we might get into trouble when the US customs guy, who sounded a lot more Canadian than American, kept asking me about Moose something.  He really was asking me "whose vehicle is it?".  I eventually got it and we kept on going through.  It's always amazed me that three stupid questions can get a car full of people and luggage across the border.  Somehow airports require a passport and two baggage scans to get across to Canada and back.  I hope the terrorists never understand this or we are in big trouble.

As we sped down the highway and started to see hills again we were encouraged.  The wind was still blowing at a good clip, but we managed to cruise into a little town called Saint Mary's which is right at the entrance to Glacier National Park (the American one, we didn't go in a circle). 

We got a cute little cabin at the St. Mary Lodge and Resort with a view of the entrance to the park and the river, and then headed to dinner.

There was a well mounted Grizzly sow in the lobby of the hotel.  I couldn't resist taking its picture since we never saw any bears in all the parks in Canada. 

And the girls decided, since it was windy and the temperature was down from what we had been experienced in Canada, that they needed nighties.  The gift shop seemed to have just what they were looking for. 

Tomorrow we head into the park and points beyond.  The trip continues on the Rocky Mtn Parks page.