Super Blood Moon

Last night was a total lunar eclipse, aka: the super blood moon.  Naturally I had to work late, so my super wonderful husband took pictures for me.

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Sticky Toes

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Learning to Share

It took a narrow band of sunshine for these two to decide they could share.

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Northwest Mounted Police Barracks

On our trip to Canada, we stayed in the town of Canmore.  They have preserved the Northwest Mounted Police Barracks and turned it into a museum.  Here are a few pictures I took with my cell phone, because I forgot to take the camera with me.

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Hiking the Athabasca Glacier

On our last full day in Canada, Glen and I scheduled a hike on the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park.

When we got there it was blowing snow and visibility was pretty poor.

However, by the time everyone in our group geared up the snow had stopped and the sun had come out.  We had to hike up to the glacier, which was the hardest part because it was so rocky.

This is the view once we got onto the glacier.

Our guide dug down and handed all of us some of the glacial ice.  This ice is 200 plus years old.  Pretty amazing to think about.

Our guide graciously took our picture 🙂

Here you can see more snow moving in. It was pretty much at this time the guide thought it would be a good idea to start heading back down.

We hiked most of the way back down the glacier next to a shallow crevasse.  You can also see it had started to snow.

We got to look down into a glacial hole, one at a time, while holding our guides hand to make sure we didn’t fall in.

At this point it was snowing pretty hard and the wind was blowing gale force.  We had to shield our faces because the snow was hitting us and stinging our skin.

The snow sure made the view pretty on the drive back to Canmore.

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On our way to the Athabasca Glacier

Last Thursday Glen and I had a glacier walk scheduled on Mount Athabasca.  The Icefield Parkway, also known as Highway 93, was a gorgeous drive and we finally saw wildlife other than squirrels.

It was a long drive from Canmore to the Icefield Center in Jasper National Park.  However, the views were like this for the whole drive.

The wildlife we saw were mountain goats.  They had traffic at a complete standstill as they made their way down and across the highway.

Ink Pots

There was a trail we hiked that branched off of the Johnston Canyon trail.  Most tourists don’t hike this trail, and being anti large crowd type of people, we decided to go for it.  The trail took us to some ink pots.  The ink pots are springs that bubble up to the surface and create emerald green pools.  The sediment is like quick sand and you can see the water moving it around.

Hiking Johnston Canyon

Johnston Canyon was a fantastic hike because it is a relatively easy hike and it was rife with waterfalls.

Glen snapped this at the beginning of the trail before the hoards of tourists surrounded us.

Bow Lake

The same day that Glen and I went to Peyto lake we also hiked around Bow Lake.  It was a blustery cold day and I ended up getting windburned.  The lake was very beautiful and has a trail that takes you to a waterfall.

Here we are on the trail to the waterfall.

Of course there were plenty of cute ground squirrels to take pictures of.

This one had mud all over its face.  Made me wonder what in the world it was up to.

Selfie of me and Glen with Bow Lake as a backdrop.

Peyto Lake

Peyto Lake was, for me, the most beautiful lake that we saw.  It was also one of the coolest and windiest days for us.

There is a nice paved trail at Peyto Lake for visitors.  We saw a few nifty things along the way, such as this cute squirrel that was very busy having a snack.

These mushrooms were as big as dinner plates and look like they have been burned.  Very ominous looking fungus.

Panoramic shot of Peyto Lake.  It was just stunning.