We mostly had a spring in our step, enjoying the fresh greens as we hiked in the foothills through stands of aspen and spruce.
It’s sunny now, but just you wait…
Most days started sunny and finished cloudy, with temperatures below seasonal. Cooler conditions, fewer bugs! The big show was on our last night, featuring several thunderstorms with heavy rain and some hail, rolling through one after the other. We don’t mind that weather, but Scout isn’t a fan, trembling more than those aspens.
Good for hiking
One morning, at second coffee o’ clock, a bear wandered by, just a few metres from where we were sitting. Scout, who always lets the deer and squirrels know who’s boss (don’t tell her, but they are) didn’t even look up. All that time she spends playing at being a wolf, and she couldn’t be bothered with as little as a token growl.
Bear territory
The bear wasn’t bothered, not by Scout, nor by us, and off it went in search of more wildflowers, perhaps hoping to be a step ahead of the many deer in the area. We finished our coffee and enjoyed a short loop hike above the Sheep River, close to our campsite, where we saw the clouds building up over the mountains nearby. We just made it back before getting a soaking. Phew!
Striking
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Wandering around the boat basin on a sunny morning seemed a pleasant way to spend an hour. It helped that the bright blue skies and warm sunshine made the scenes even more colourful. Very cheerful!
Colourful
The previous day had been very blustery, and the clanging and clanking of masts, as well as the singing lines as the wind blew through the rigging made for a haunting song of sorts.
So colourful
The eagles appeared to love the weather, sun or rain, blustery or not, and their piercing cries and shrill calls could be heard each day, even over the constant wind.
Feathered friend – can carry a tune
One morning, just before sun up, several eagles flew up into the trees to the left and right of our campsite. There they perched, offering an occasional cry, for a few minutes, almost if as if they were waiting with me for the sun to appear over nearby Mt. Ozzard.
Fanciful, I know, but they flew off mere moments after the sun’s first rays started to warm the harbour. I raised my coffee cup in acknowledgment, but they were gone, no doubt looking for something more interesting than the robust dark roast.
Robust
Rain or shine, wind or calm, Ucluelet Harbour is rarely a dull place!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Leaving the mountains behind us, our task was to find spring, or at least a place with no recent snow on the ground.
Spoiler alert – task completed
So we headed west across mountains, and more mountains, emerging onto the flatland delta, continuing until the road stopped. There, we got on a ferry to cross the Salish Sea to Vancouver Island, disembarked, and headed west once again until the road stopped again.
The end of the road (the end of a rutted and muddy track)
We have found spring (almost summer by west coast standards) in one of our happy places, and, even better, have been catching up with old friends. Hard to imagine we were cooling beer in the snow a week ago.
Snow? Nope!
It feels as if winter has finally let go for real, spring has arrived for sure, and summer isn’t too far around the corner. Camping days ahead!
Summer is ahead? Yes deer!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
We’re back on the road for the next little while, in fact we have been the past week. We trundled through the prairies for a few days, before heading into Kananaskis at the end of the long weekend. As we ventured in, we saw quite a number of campers leaving early. We wondered why?
Was it the weather? Maybe!
It grew distinctly cool as the weekend progressed – more snow anyone? Yup, that happened. Thank goodness we didn’t have to worry about keeping our evening beer chilled. Who needs ice or a cooler?!
Alberta cooler
By the time this is posted we should be somewhere in BC, searching for some warmth and a little less snow…
“Snow? Behind me? I don’t believe you!”
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
We do! If you ever have the opportunity, traveling the Hoodoo Trail in the Drumheller, AB region is an interesting way to discover some amazing geological formations in an arid location.
Near Drumheller, AB
I imagine it gets pretty busy – and very hot – in the summer months, but we were lucky enough to stop at the formations shared here on a relatively quiet and pleasantly warm midweek spring day. Early in the season as it was, it felt hot after the long slow start to spring – no complaints!
“Hoodoo? I do!”
It always amuses me that the area is known as the badlands, and I understand why, but they are some of my favourite lands to visit, with such a different geography and geology. Dinosaur territory if that kind of thing interests you…
Spotted this one roaming our campground
We ended our morning with a fine lunch and cold pint at the Last Chance Saloon in nearby Wayne. As with the rock formations, if you ever have a chance to visit, it is great place to stop and cool off.
One of my finest photographs ever, taken through a dusty windshield
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
At last! We’re camping, and it’s spring! No, not the spring found on the calendar but it’s still snowing outside – instead, it’s the real and actual spring where the sun shines and snow is a distant memory (just over a week ago, but it’s gone now…)
Early May, not late fall! Or winter!
We’re out in the prairie badlands (bad? good!) a couple of hours northeast of Calgary. Spotty wifi but lots of wildlife, so more to share at a later date.
Big blue Alberta skies
In the meantime, thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Muffled by snow, helped by being a good distance from the main highway and train line, Emerald Lake is a bowl of quiet, tree lined and surrounded by mountains.
Quiet
Until last week, we hadn’t visited in almost ten years, but little has changed, and it still delights. Ten years is a considerable chunk of a human span, but nothing in mountain measured time. I like mountain terrain, because it keeps you small, and encourages perspective.
Speaking only for myself, lately it’s been a challenge sometimes to go about my business – the business of enjoying almost retirement and having a pleasant time living in western Canada – when it’s the case that there are utter morons (invariably but not exclusively of the right wing nut bar brigade) doing their level best to make bad situations far, far worse. I won’t go into details, you read the news. I generally (and genuinely) do try to keep things chipper on here, but, bloody hell, it’s a mess out there, isn’t it? Ok, stopping there, more or less.
Bemused mountain?
Fanciful I know, but maybe the mountains shake their heads in bemusement, and perhaps even disappointment, at the grasping antics of certain tiny humans. Do mountains concern themselves with small people, particularly those fuelled by ego or narcissism? Probably not. Ok, time to stop.
Genuinely grand
Petty people, deluded by their own “grandeur” – grandeur, ha! – as if! Oh, come on, the word isn’t grandeur – let’s try greed! I have to laugh at their smallness, their lack of awareness, of what they really signify in the grand scheme. Ok, stopping here, for sure, more or less.
Looking up
Thank goodness for vast landscapes and quiet places, locations that might remind us nothing lasts forever, and of exactly how big or small we really are…
A hint of brightness
Thanks for reading – what passes for normal service will resume next week – and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
…and a tale of adventure and bravery. (One that ended in a fall, tee-hee! Who said that? Not those squirrels again?)
Don’t listen to them, it’s not true. The fall, if it could even be called that – it was more of a graceful tumble or delicate descent – came at the midpoint of the trip, but it is fair to say it was the end of the outward leg. And the end of a fully functional left leg, but that happened later. Goodness, does this all sound mildly cryptic? No? Just confusing, then? Stick around if you want – it gets less exciting.
Mighty (old photo)
I thought I’d try an easy cross country ski trail, one with a trailhead a short walk from the cabin we were staying in. The trail runs along a flat (almost flat – I’ll get to that shortly) valley, one overlooked by the mighty Castle mountain in the Bow Valley. I’d been on this trail before, more than ten years ago, and I remembered it as a fairly gentle there and back again outing.
Plodding
Once I’d found my steady plodding xc ski rhythm, the going was pretty good. I was upright, balanced, and making steady progress along the trail. I paused to allow one or two skiers on the return part of their outing to get by, nodding a greeting and agreeing on the perfect conditions. That was about right, given the cold but not too cold afternoon, and the very light snowfall – barely falling in truth, mostly flakes floating on a light breeze. “Why,” I thought to myself, “why hadn’t I been out here sooner this winter? I’ve clearly cracked this xc skiing lark at last!” With that, on I went, a happy and jolly super little skier.
Gentle slope
After about 45 minutes of gentle skiing and gliding, it occurred to me that I’d have to turn around at some point, head back to base before it got dark or I got too tired. It’s when I’m tired on skis that I (very occasionally) fall over, and I didn’t want to get to that point. I slowed to a stop and started to turn around, carefully lifting one ski out of the tracks, then the other. Then I fell over.
“But I’m not even tired yet!” I thought to myself. Nearby squirrels laughed as I fumed silently, untangling my legs and pushing myself back to my feet. Other than the squirrels, there was no one around to witness this embarrassment, and I’m certainly not about to tell anyone, let me tell you.
You can’t see them, or hear them, but they were in there, laughing
Oh my, the long slog back! It turns out maybe I haven’t conquered xc skiing after all. And I haven’t got the same mighty legs I had ten years ago. Goodness, it was hard work. That 45 minutes of gentle gliding must have been more than an hour of very steep uphill return struggle. (Erm, if it was a gentle glide down, it can hardly have been a steep slope back, right OldPlaidCamper? What’s that? Have you been talking to those gossipy squirrels? Anyway, I’m not taking questions right now!)
“Has he mentioned his legs yet? Wake me when it’s over…”
The most important thing about it all was that I was a very brave boy and I didn’t complain for days and days after about my poor aching legs. Just the left one. And only for one or two days. Oh, ok – three!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Blue skies with a few gathering white clouds – it did snow later in the day – combined with cold, but not too cold temperatures, made for great snowshoe conditions the other day. It had been more than a year since we last found ourselves in properly deep snow, so this was a great chance to see how our legs would hold up!
Being in a river valley, we opted to stay low and follow the river rather than go for steep slopes and sore muscles. I got those later anyway, but not snowshoeing. More on that another time.
Keep moving!
Helpfully, there was a trail to assist us, and we followed whoever had been out the days before, their tracks leading over the tracks and down to the river.
To the river
We could see a single set of footprints that occasionally stepped out of the tracks, leaving deep holes on the side. Fair play to the person – we said hi when we met them retracing their steps a little later, the only person we saw all morning – but it must have been hard going without snowshoes.
Easy going, as always!
As I mentioned last week, it was so quiet – we weren’t huffing and puffing too much after the first few minutes – and when we eventually stopped to sit and take it all in (and enjoy an all important caffeine and chocolate boost, ‘cos how else would we have made it back?) the silence was wonderful.
Rest stop
By the time we returned to the cabin, we’d probably been actually walking for a couple of hours, and I’ll admit it felt quite the workout. Still, I was ready for more, and, later that day, I set off to find a nearby trailhead, convinced I had enough left in me to tackle an “easy” there and back again ski trail. I wonder how that went?
Bow river beauty
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
What a relief it was to arrive at Baker Creek, check into our little cabin, and smile when we were told internet was spotty at best due to limited satellite uplink capacity (or something) and cell phone service was basically zero. Imagine our disappointment…
No cell service?! Oh our disappointment, teehee…
It was hard to see who was more gleeful to be out in the mountains, and to be running helter skelter through the deep snow, but I think Scout edged it. She was able to make slightly faster progress with four leg drive than we did on two. And yes, instead of dumping bags and heading straight out the door to explore the immediate surroundings, a short pause to don snow pants and snowshoes would have been sensible. Sensible? Nope, no time for that!
Sensible? No time for that!
We stumbled and postholed around the perimeter, trying to stay in the middle of snowmobile tracks, but with Scout leading and pulling, we weren’t able to keep from drifting into drifts. Mother had mentioned, before we left, not to fall into any deep drifts. Good advice! (We saw, from the road on the way home a few days later, an elk caught in a deep drift and bulldozing – elk-dozing? – it’s way out. Hope it made it…)
A still space to sit and think
Poorly equipped for even a short walk as we were, we still enjoyed how silent and still (our mad stumbling aside) everything was. The blanket of snow was so pretty, muffling most noise. Winter mountain hush! Blessed quiet! We could just about hear the tinkling chuckle-gurgle of the creek, and, luckily, see it in a few places where it hadn’t been snowed over. Scout desperately wanted to get closer, odd for her, given she doesn’t enjoy the water, but we resisted her efforts. Sorry, Scout – wet feet and minus fifteen don’t mix!
The creek
Eventually, slightly wet legged due to snowmelt on lower jeans, and ready to admit we should have put on snowshoes, we returned to our cabin to unpack, find dry pants, and get warmed up by the fire. Oh, and crack open a red ale we’d been saving as a fireside sipper. It was just the thing as we planned a proper snowshoe adventure for the following day!
Planning aide
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
OldPlaidCamper 