Banff

Lower Falls Johnston Canyon

Today we explored the Bow River Parkway from Lake Louise to Banff. The flowers along the side of the road were spectacular – lots of daisies, with fireweed and Indian Paint Brush intermixed. The skies are hazy with smoke from the near-by fire that has been burning for over a month. Our primary stop for the day was Johnston’s Canyon. We've been here many a time in the rain, but today the sun is shining. We started up, but when the trail became a suspended catwalk over the river, Mary let me proceed on my own. The canyon has seven waterfalls in this 1.5 mile stretch. The lower falls is unique because directly across from it is a cave which had been carved out from the river many centuries ago. It gave a unique perspective on the falls. I continued climbing past a series of smaller falls, until I reached upper falls. Here we had a weeping wall opposite the falls, streaked with yellows and orange rock. The falls itself had both a main falls and a side falls spurting down.

Fireweed along Bow Parkway

We headed for lunch along the parkway, and were hit by a vicious flight of mosquitoes as we ate our sandwiches. We headed on down to Banff and took the Vermillion Lakes road to see the mountains reflected in these shallow lakes. 

Vermillion Lakes

The town of Banff was originally created around a natural hot springs. The dispute for who owned the hot springs here was the original reason they turned this into Canada’s first national park.  While in Banff we stopped at the Park Museum, built in 1903, and now a historical museum. The animal exhibits were created in the early 1900’s, so you could get a feel for a typical museum in that era. Most of the exhibits were stuffed birds and mammals with a few unique artifacts like: a tree limb growing through a rock hole or fossils found in the area. It did allow us to compare the size of a coyote with a grey wolf or distinguish between the many types of hawks that live in this area. The building itself looked modern, they must have done an excellent job in refurbishing it. The town of Banff was filled with people – much worse than Estes Park, feeling more like Aspen. We attempted to go to the original bathhouse, but construction on the road made that difficult. When we couldn't find the bath house, we decided to head back to camp and avoid the crowds here. On the way, we crossed onto the Bow River Parkway and above us on a bridge was a nest of Osprey with at least three youngsters looking like they would be flying soon.

Lake Louise

Lake Louise

We beat the crowds to Lake Louise and decided to join Park Ranger Nadine on a 2 hour walk along the lake (at the cost of $15/person). This was the ‘royal tour’ since so much about the lake and mountains has to do with royalty: Mount Victoria (for the Queen) the highest peak behind the lake, Lake Louise (for her 4^th daughter, Louise), and Winter, the king of the mountains, holding sway for 8 months of the year. Lake Louise was originally called the Lake of the Little Fishes and then renamed Lake Louise (but for the daughter of the head of the Royal Scientific society, not the Queen's daughter). We also learned that when the railroad first was built, they advertised this as little Switzerland, encouraging mountaineering. And after an initial death on the mountain, they brought in Swiss Mountaineers to guide folks. There was not a single death during the 34 years that they guided the public. This area is one of the best in North America for the tracking of glaciers, since it has been constantly observed since 1895 with photographic evidence. The glacier here has receded since 1840, but has been relatively stable for the last 10 years. We also learned that mountain goats live on the rocks to escape predators, primarily eating the grasses and dried flowers. In the winter, they move to wind-blown slopes to eat, where there isn't a lot of snow. The goat has a cleaved hoof with a soft center that they can use to grip the rocks. Along the shore the flowers were also in abundance, and she identified quite a few different species. The tour ended at the far shore and then we returned to an abundance of people and a parking nightmare. We were happy to leave and find a quiet picnic area down the road for lunch.

Moraine Lake and Valley of the Ten Peaks

In the afternoon, we went to Moraine Lake, just a few kilometers away. Parking was again a problem, but we got lucky. The best view of the Lake was from the rock pile at the outlet side of the lake. From here you can see the expanse of the Valley of the Ten Peaks with Moraine Lake stretching out before us. You can get this same view from the back of the Canadian $20 bill. I walked the shoreline while Mary stayed near the lodge. The population thinned out quickly as I walked. There is a huge ice field that fills a crevice in the mountain opposite the lake, quite a unique sight. The trail ends at the inlet to the lake and the emerald color of the lake stands out from here. By the time I completed this hike it was beer time, so we headed back to camp.

Temple Mountain from our Campground

Yoho National Park

We spent the day exploring nearby Yoho National Park. First up, Takakkaw Falls, one of the tallest waterfalls in Canada. To get there you take a road with two hairpin turns, that are so sharp buses actually have to travel backwards between them to get up the road. The falls is only a short walk from the parking lot, but it is so spectacular with its huge drop and about a ¼ of the way down it it’s rock and sprays outward.

Emerald Lake

Our next stop was Emerald Lake where we stopped for lunch. We took the 5.3 km hike around the lake. The easy way is to head clockwise around the lake – which has a flat trail and is easy to turn around when you get tired.  But, because of the angle of the sun, and my desire for nice photos, we went counter-clockwise which required us to go up and then down a hill, before beginning the flat part of the trail. Indeed, it proved picturesque, especially because the reflections were superb in the calm water. But, it made it more difficult to turn around if we got tired, because of the hill. Mary made it completely around the lake, and she was grateful for the flat trail at the end. The path had a lot of contrasts in land and vegetation. The South side of the lake was damp with plants that would normally grow near the Cascade Range on the coast. Then we came to dry-land forest, and finally an area that was wide-open from the avalanches that would regularly pass through. This area sported a lot of Fireweed and Indian Paintbrush.

Yoho Natural Bridge

Our final stop was the Yoho Natural Bridge. The water feature here used to be a waterfall, but the water undercut the rock and left a bridge of stone above with the water shooting through below. 

Ice Field Parkway

Today, we’re heading down from Jasper to Lake Louise on the Ice Field Parkway. The weather is absolutely gorgeous, we’ll have high’s in the low 80’s with the sun shining throughout the day. Our first stop is Athabasca Falls. Here the river is slowing carving away the hard rock, resulting in the falls, many potholes (where the water and silt eat away at the rock in a whirlpool), and the canyon walls. This falls and canyon has a lot more water than we saw yesterday in Maligne canyon. Since the sun was shining we also had a lot of rainbows from the spray of the falls. An interesting factoid about Athabasca Falls, below the falls exist about 7 different species of fish, but above the falls only the Bull Trout can be found.

Goat at Kerkeslin Goat Lick

We proceeded onward to Kerkeslin Goat Lick and sure enough, we had a group of about 6 Rocky Mountain Goats licking up the salt there and creating quite a traffic jam. Further along was Sunwapte Falls, not quite as spectacular as Athabasca. Just as the road began climbing out of the river valley, we came upon Tangle Falls, not in the main river itself, but in one of the tributaries. It was very different, less water, but a large series of falls, quite wide at the top, until unified at the bottom. We pushed to the top of Athabasca pass and then down to the Ice field visitor center. Here is one of the most accessible glaciers in North America just off the highway. Athabasca glacier is about 5 km long one of several glaciers coming down from the Columbia Ice Field on top of the mountains. It has shrunk quite a lot since the last time we were here (per-1996) and they have built a new visitor center. From here we could also see Dome Glacier, it had quite a few more bumps. You can take a ride on the glacier, but the price seemed too steep for the short excursion out onto the glacier. I guess we were spoiled by our helicopter ride to the Glaciers on Mt Cook, New Zealand.

As we continued on into Banff National Park, there were additional scenic stops. The best one was from the Bow Summit, looking North over Peyto Lake and the mountains behind it. Peyto is one of those light blue lakes because of all the sediment from the glacier stirred up in the water. The view was simply spectacular (well worth the 100 feet in elevation gain to get to the platform). We continued into Lake Louise and our campsite for the night. Lucky thing too! The gas warning light came on, just a mile short of our campsite. Which meant that I had my first $100 tank of gas, actually $109. The price was about $5.10/gallon. When we last were here nine years ago, I was outraged at the $2.60/gallon price charged here at that time. We’ll be staying for four nights at Lake Louise Hard Side Campground. It’s a beautiful campground, stretched along the Bow River. Each site is a double site with electricity and a about 20 feet of trees between each of these. The soft side campground is surrounded by an electrified bear fence to reduce bear-people interactions.

View of Peyto Lake from Bow Summit

Maligne Canyon and Lake

Edith Cavell Mountain

We woke up to a beautiful day in Jasper National Park. We started the day by taking the road to the base of Edith Cavell Mountain. This mountain stands out from the others here because it is covered with snow and has an active glacier on it. The road climbs quickly from the river valley and we are soon rewarded with a view of a U shaped valley reminding us of Yosemite Valley with the granite peaks on either side. At the top was a short path called the Path of the Glacier. We noticed, however, that it looked like part of the parking lot had been swept away by a flood. Sure enough the last third of the trail was considered too dangerous. In August, 2012, a part of the Ghost Glacier calved off and fell in Cavell lake which led to a 3-4 meter swell of water pouring down the canyon. The path remains closed next to the lake in fear that this could happen again.

We headed for Maligne Canyon afterwards, stopping for a picnic lake next to one of the many lakes in the region. The Maligne river got its name from a French trapper who had great difficulty crossing the river, given it the name Maligne like the word, maligned. The canyon is actually a deep gorge with many waterfalls and whirlpools among the rocks. It was quite colorful in spots because of the green and gold mosses hanging next to the white washed rocks. Mary took the first two bridges which were fairly easy, while I went a little further to the third bridge, which was a steeper climb down and back. As we were nearing the parking lot, we caught a rare sight, a mother bear and her cub. The park service had created a fence line to keep people from getting to close to the river, unfortunately the bears were on opposite sides of the fence. We left rather quickly, since we figured this could become a problem when the mother discovered her cub surrounded by humans on the other side of the fence.

We continued down the road to Maligne Lake. The scenery along the way was picturesque, especially the view toward the mountains at Medicine Lake. I had planned to take the 90 minute boat ride to Spirit Island on the lake until we saw that was the price $64/person, about the same as our annual pass to the Canadian Park System. We decided to take a short hike along the lake shore instead. The lake is the deepest in the park, and it has many mountain peaks around it, most still sporting snow in late July.

Maligne Lake

Jasper National Park

Entering Jasper National Park

We headed southwest from Edmonton along a beautiful 4 lane road. Soon the rain had stopped and within a couple of hours we could see mountains in the distance. Then after coming over the top of a hill, we were in them! We entered Jasper National Park a few miles further along and started following a river. The road never got too steep, we soon found out that Jasper while surrounded by mountains of about 8000 feet is only up about 3500 feet. By 2:30, we arrived at Whistler Campground with over 400 sites, but since it is a Saturday, it’s lucky we had a reservation, the campground will be full tonight.

Pyramid Mountain and Lake

After setting up camp, we went into Jasper to visit the park information office and get some local road and trail maps. On our way out, we were greeted by a gentleman who told us the story of the building (built as the park office and a home) in about 1914. At the time, the only way you could get here was by train. In fact, the road from Edmonton wasn't completed until the mid-1960’s and the road west in the mid-1970’s. After they created the park, people from other towns along the railroad, but in the park were asked to move to Jasper. The train not only transported their goods, but also their house to Jasper. We did a short drive and walk to Pyramid Lake. Behind the lake is the sight of Pyramid mountain, a colorful mountain with streaks of brown and gold (actually pyrite) in the grey stone.

Royal Alberta Museum

We woke up to wind and pouring rain, luckily I had planned a day that would mostly be indoors. (we found out that most flights to/from Edmonton were cancelled today.) After sleeping in, we headed out to the RoyalAlberta Museum in Edmonton. Unfortunately, I misread the directions and we got a tour of downtown quite by accident. We eventually found the turn I had missed and the museum too. This is a natural history museum covering the original people of the area and the minerals, plants, birds, and animals of Alberta. The most extensive exhibit in on the original peoples of the area. Alberta has been inhabited since the end of the Ice Age about 11,000 years ago. We learned about the way of life of these people, their tools, medicines, spiritual practices and how they hunted, fished and eventually farmed this area. At the end of the exhibit, the relations with the European and Canadian government were covered. I don’t know who was treated worse, the American Indian or the First People of Canada. There problems were very similar – treaties not followed, land taken, reservations, discrimination, and the destruction of their way of life. In Canada, they had a period where they were forbidden to even perform their ritual dances. As late as the 1970’s the government was trying to assimilate the people rather than let follow their own culture. That has finally changed since the 1980’s where they now have more control of their health system, education, and society.

As we went through the other sections of the museum, the dinosaur/fossil area was pretty small, they had a lot of dioramas about the wildlife, but the best section was actually on the minerals (both from Alberta and world-wide). They also had a traveling exhibit on leather jackets – how they started as protection for motorcycle and car riders in the 1930’s, but became the signs of rebellion and rock-and-roll in the 1950’s. There were some interesting leather jackets worn by Elvis Presley, the Fonz, and other notable characters.

Indian Fish Trap Diorama

After the museum, we visited the West Edmonton Mall, the original huge mall. Yes, there were lots of stores and an amusement park like in Mall of America, but they also had an ice skating rink, a mini version of Sea World, and a water park within the enclosure. Given all the rain, we enjoyed watching the people – lots of ethnicities, clothes, and interestingly shoes. On the way back to the trailer we stopped at Smitty’s for dinner, they had a great senior meal: main course with vegetables and potatoes, soup, drink, and desert for $10.49. 

Reynolds - Alberta Museum

Model T Snow Vehicle

We continued on to Edmonton, Alberta today with our one stop at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum, a museum about transportation. Most of the museum is dedicated to the automobile. They had numerous classical cars from the early 1900’s – electric, steam, and gasoline powered. The exhibit continued on with cars from the 20’s through the 50’s. There was also a large exhibit about the transition from horse drawn farm implements to tractors and the significant productivity improvement that resulted, especially when you considered how many farm resources went to feed the horses. A similar point was made about trucks versus horse-drawn vehicles. Within a city environment they could deliver about 4 times as much product in a day. The unique parts of the museum were some of the early motorcycles, and snow vehicles. Particularly interesting was a kit to turn your Model T into a snow vehicle by adding skis in place of the front wheels and a track mechanism to the rear wheels. In another building was a small collection of planes from an early 1908 canvas and wood up through most of the propeller models through the 1940's. For some reason, there was also a recent unmanned propeller driven plane of modern day. The vehicle collection was much more impressive than the plane collection.

Early Steam Tractor

Heritage Park

We spent the entire day at Heritage Park in Calgary. Many historic buildings from Alberta have been reassembled here (or in some cases reproduced) to present the history of the province. There are different sections of the park for the various times in history: the time of fur trappers and military outposts, the coming of the railroad, the farming community, and the largest exhibit was the boom times of 1900-1914 displaying many different buildings of the period. The place was swarming with families and children. They kept them happy with a train ride, boat ride, wagon ride, and an amusement park with rides primarily from the 1920-30’s.


Our favorite part of the day was talking with the fur trader, who showed us how to set a muskrat trap and invited us back to set the bear trap that night. We managed to easily spend six hours here: touring the various buildings, taking the train and boat ride, talking to the people explaining many of the exhibits. At the end we briefly visited the Gasoline Alley Museum with many antique vehicles, early gasoline stations, and a large collection of gas pumps. 

Heritage Square

Lethbridge to Calgary

Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens

We started our morning by visiting the Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens, a tranquil spot in a mostly industrial town. The gardens were small, but beautiful. A lot of effort had been made to build a tranquil setting with ornately pruned trees, carefully placed rocks, and gurgling water features. The pavilion house was set up to be a Japanese Tea room and an exhibit of water painting depicted a pilgrimage to Japan. Our favorite part of the visit though was wandering the pools with their reflections of rocks, waterfalls, and trees. We also just spent time in the gazebo listening to the reverberation of the water against the rocks, a nice respite from the highways.

We continued on to Calgary and tried out the Calaway RV Park. The park is right next to an amusement park of the same name, we didn’t go, but lots of the families did. I can’t recommend this RV Park, because it is poorly designed, most of the utilities are shared between two campsites, and the posts for electricity and water may be too far for your connectors (they do offer extension cords for rent). The sewage connection did not have enough maneuvering room for the connectors.

Old and New Buildings in Calgary

In the evening, we did a rare thing, we visited the center of the city. The famous landmark of the city is the Calgary Tower, but at $18.00/person, it didn’t seem worth going up to see the view. We did, however, walk the pedestrian street, Stevens street nearby. It actually was quite interesting because of the mix of new and old architecture – sandstone classical buildings mixed with the steel and glass of new buildings. The stores stayed open till 5 and then it became a restaurant and bar scene. We had a Guinness and Harp at the Irish Bar along with some Irish Meat Pies, great setting and good food. The prettiest part of Stevens street was near the municipal building, Olympic park. A huge pool of water with fountains and flowers as well as the award platform for the 1988 Olympics. The awards continue, since all the Olympic medal winners are commemorated here on bronze plaques.

Olympic Plaza

Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center

We headed west to Great Falls, Montana to visit the Lewis& Clark Interpretive Center.  We had last visited this museum eight years ago, but I’ll admit I didn’t remember much about it. My intention had been to visit the C. M. Russel museum, but it is closed on Mondays. The museum tells the story of the Lewis an Clark Expedition, beginning with finding equipment and supplies in Philadelphia until they reach the coast of Oregon. It particularly focuses on two areas: the tribes encountered along the way and the 18 mile portage around the five falls in this area. A couple interesting facts about the Indians. First, they spent a winter with the Mandan Indians in South Dakota; here they met a French Fur Trader and his Indian wife, Sacagawea. While she did not guide the party anywhere, she proved instrumental when they needed to trade their canoes for horses in order to cross the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho. She had been taken by the Mandans from her people as a young girl, and as luck would have it, she recognized her brother as they headed west and he was chief of the tribe. The expedition also had very few problems with any Indian tribes, since she was along, the Indians felt this wasn’t a war party. The other interesting fact about the Indians is that Lewis & Clark, noted the words in each Indian tongue for common objects. Jefferson felt that there would be commonalities among the languages for Indians that had frequent contact. As they crossed the Bitterroot Mountains, the words of the languages changed, indicating a different family of languages and Indians.

Portage around Great Falls

The Great Falls proved to be the toughest obstacle on the entire journey. It took them 2 weeks to portage the 18 miles around these five falls, pulling their dugout canoes on a home-made wooden cart up and down the hills. They lost some of the canoes and had to spend another 2 weeks remaking 2 canoes before they could continue their journey.

Eagle Falls today (one of 5 falls)

After our stop we continued up to Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada to stay at the Bridgeview RV Park, a compact park with lots of trees. The place was filled with RVs from Alberta. As we crossed Alberta, the land changed from ranch land to agricultural land. Everywhere the fields are bright yellow with Canola, but we also see wheat, corn, and flax (in a beautiful blue/purple tint).

Little Bighorn

We camped in Douglas Wyoming last night at Deer Park RV, an older campground with lots of shade and an ice cream social every night ($1.50 for two scoops, bring your own bowl). We headed West on I-90 to Little Bighorn Battlefield, renamed from Custer Battlefield in 1991. Based on our experience in Gettysburg we decided to take the bus tour of the battlefield to get a better feel for the battle. Our guide was a Crow Indian, who at the time were scouts for Custer’s forces.

Site of Custer's Last Stand

 In 1868, a treaty had been signed with the Indians designating most of Eastern Wyoming as a permanent Indian reservation. But in 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills and the negotiations to buy the Black Hills from Sitting Bull (the Lakota leader) failed. Sitting Bull and his tribe left the reservation after the influx of the gold seekers. They encroached on Crow land, which is why the Crows helped Custer against Sitting Bull. Here at Little Bighorn, the Indians formed an encampment of 5000-7000 Indians (about a quarter of them warriors). Because of the lay of the land, only the southern tip of this encampment was visible to Custer and his scouts, so he didn’t realize his 600 men were outnumbered. He divided his forces and attacked the Indian encampment. The rest, as they say, is history. About 210 men under Custer’s command were killed during a fairly short battle. Reno’s men who had been split off, lost 53 men, and then retreated. If Custer had waited a day, he would have been reinforced by General Terry coming from the North and perhaps the battle might have a different ending. Unfortunately, for the Indians this was the beginning of the end. The federal government sent more troops to control the Indians and this was the last battle won by the Indians. Eventually, they returned to much smaller reservations in the Dakota’s, Wyoming, and Montana.

Indian Memorial added in 2003

We continued on to Lewiston, MT through country that alternated between beautiful and barren. Lewiston itself is near an area with trees and rolling hills. We finally have gotten north of the haze coming from numerous fires in Idaho and Oregon.

I-25 through Wyoming

If you would rather view a narrated video, rather than read about this trip, it is available on youtube. 

We spend most of the day heading north on I-25 through Wyoming. Our only stop of the day was at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, WY. We both felt that we had been here before, because the building looked so familiar. Run by the BLM, I suspect that it is a similar museum to another we’ve visited. As we arrived they were having a special talk on firearms used by the settlers and Indians of the area. We learned a few new things. While the settlers gave the Indians rifles, the Indians were dependent upon white men for both gun powder and bullets for many years. These became profitable trade items. The first Colt pistol had 5 shots in the revolver. But these had to be individually loaded with shot and tamped with gun powder. Each shot also had to be surrounded with grease or firing one of them would light the entire set, usually resulting in severe injury to the shooter.

The Oregon Trail

The museum itself covers the story of the key trails that came through Casper: the Oregon, California, and Mormon trail as well as the pony express route. All these trails crossed the continental divide at South Pass (southwest of here). All these trails follow the Platt River for over 500 miles and here they cross the Platt for the last time. This was often a dangerous crossing, the river can be 10 feet deep here, and often wagon trains would get delayed here waiting for the water to recede. In the 1850’s a ferry was created and later a toll bridge. The trains then followed the Sweetwater passing Independence rock (the goal was to reach here before July 4^th to beat the winter snows).  This all ended in the late 1860’s when the first transcontinental railroad was completed.