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Showing posts with the label Alberta

Cute fluffy things

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After two weeks in Waterton we head into Alberta, Canada We head to Calgary to catch up with a few friends Shirley and Frank and Michelle. Testing my new macro in  Shirley's garden A barn just up the road from Shirley's While staying at Shirley's we had a massive storm come through. It had been a fairly warm night and I had the window open to get a breeze, but wind came up and the venetians started rattling, so we shut it and pulled in the awning. Not long after at 3am a thunder clap boomed above our heads and then the stand-by light on the TV went out. The lightening hit the junction box at the end of the street. Phew, that was a close one. Since it's been ages since we went out for dinner Lindsay embarks on a mission to find a good Indian restaurant. Frank and Michelle have never eaten Indian before and don't sound very enthusiastic. Trust me, says Lindsay. We get a tip from one of Frank's customers that Namskar was one the best Indian restauran...

Mischievous Bears

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Unless you are in the top of Australia (think estuarine crocodiles as the freshies are harmless!), we normally never have to worry about walking into something that might potentially eat us. Here in North America they have cougar (probably my biggest fear) and bears. We also watch out here for snakes (rattlers in the desert), bison, elk and moose as they can kill you too. This week we really had to watch all around us in case a bear just appeared behind us. Be careful when you come out of the restroom! As you can see we finally got to see the sow and cubs. We had been looking for them ever since we arrived, but no show until this day. These cubs are a lot bigger than the ones we saw last year, it just goes to show that if it is a mild winter they can start eating sooner, and get bigger quicker. Mum sent the cubs up the tree for safety Cathy spotted some movement in the forest up near the Cameron Lake carpark. There was a mating pair in there, a cinnamon sow a...

Looking for the wise ones

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Calgary, Cochrane & Kananaskas Provincial Park, Alberta We were planning to go to Calgary to meet up with Frank who was at Lake Clark AK, last year and now that Cathy and Jim whom we met in Yellowstone this year had introduced us to Kyle and his family in Waterton, we had another reason. Kyle suggested we go to Kananaskas, which is ‘next door’ to the Canadian Rockies (Banff etc) and where the locals go. After looking at the map, I was thoroughly confused as it had many different areas, so we decided to go to Calgary first. Kyle had asked his father if we could stay in his driveway as he lives on acreage outside town, to which he agreed. I think it helped that we were Australian as he loves Australia, having been there twice and calls Australia ‘Canada with palm trees’. Calgary is similar to an Australian small city. The weather is perfect, around the mid 20’s C each day and the food in the supermarkets is similar to ours as well. His father has a number of Kyle’s photographs on...

Looking for Moose in Jasper

Unlike our previous trip to Jasper, the weather was divine. 27-29C with sunny blue skies and not many mosquitoes. The campground we had planned on staying in was closed as the summer season had finished and all the electric and full hook up sites were taken in the campground we had stayed in before. But as we are self sufficient we were able to take a non serviced site, which was really nice and even though we could have got another site on the third night, we decided to stay where we were. We got caught by the time zone thing again and didn’t realise until the second day that we had been putting our generator on at the wrong times the previous day. Jasper is in Alberta and we were another hour ahead. We went looking for moose in a couple of places and even hiked the 3.5kms around moose lake, but you guessed it, no moose! The visitors’ centre has a book that people write wild life sightings in and there were a few entries for moose and bears but not many. We saw a coyote walking a...

The Top of the Rockies

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Jasper, AB Canada Jasper is the most northern town of the Canadian Rockies. Our campground is in the forest and the nicest of all the campsites so far in Canada. As with the others, the fire permit is $8.70 per night and they supply the wood which is a bit green. Again our campsite doesn’t have a fire ring, so we can’t have one. There are over 700 campsites in this campground but you would never know it as it is over such a large area. The mosquitoes are ferocious and many people have insect tents out, so maybe we wouldn’t want to be sitting around a fire anyway. A ranger told Lindsay today that last years mosquitoes were so big and vicious they would have carted you away. The Information centre has Internet so we can check our mail. The girl on the desk lived in Busselton (south of Perth) for nine months and was very helpful in letting us know what to do in the area and where we might find some bears. Peyto Lake While yesterday was really quite warm, today is cold, wet ...

The lakes of Canada

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Lake Louise, AB Canada We took the alternative 1A highway, the Bow Valley Parkway to Lake Louise hoping to spot a bear or two, but all we saw were some mangy sheep. The campground at Lake Louise was full, so it was a good thing we booked. It is a much better layout than Tunnel Mountain in Banff, where I felt like we were parked along a road. Unfortunately our campsite doesn’t have a fire ring, so even though we have wood, we can’t have a fire - again. We tried to see Lake Louise the afternoon we arrived, but the traffic was horrible and there were no parking spots to be had unless you wanted to walk a kilometre or more and seeing as we wanted to do a long walk to the Plain of the Six Glaciers; that really didn’t appeal. So we went in search of Moraine Lake and thought we would have the same issue there as there were cars parked along the road before we got even close. Luckily they had people managing the flow of traffic in the car park and we were called over to jump the que...

Starting our Canadian Rockies tour

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Banff, AB Canada The campground in Banff is a strange set up. All the trailers and RV’s have to park on “a road”, it just feels bizarre. Power is provided, although our lead wasn’t long enough to park facing our grass and table, so we will need to get a 30-amp extension lead. We can fill up with water on the way out before going to the dump station, which is fine seeing as we are only here for three days. Wood is provided but as there are no fire pits, so we can’t use it. The mosquitoes were quick to find me so it’s not surprising that there aren’t many people sitting outside. There are a lot of Australians here in town, both tourists and employees in most of the shops and we hear our accent everywhere. There is a terrific photography gallery here that had a great shot of a moose with its nose right on the car window. After finding out where it was taken we went looking for our own moose in the wetlands but unfortunately the first road in was closed from landslides created by th...