Day 10: A Grizzly, a glacier and getting lost in the woods!

What3words: happier.accidents.opening

New adventures today! Emily saw a grizzly bear just sitting by Highway 1 (thank goodness for the fences!). You can tell the difference as a grizzly has a hump on its back, and a black/brown bear doesn’t. To be fair, if you are close enough that you are checking if it has a hump, you are too close!

We drove along the Glacier Parkway for hours and hours today. It would not have taken so long but we kept stopping!

We had a stop off at Water Fowl lakes, which were recommended to us last night as we waited for the sunset at Moraine Lake. It was a super recommendation actually, two lakes (called upper lake and lower lake, lol ) joined by a river, with a beautiful riverside walk. It was almost deserted, and yet again the water was perfectly clear.

What3 words Hotspots.kidneys.nosh

The area is a campground, and what a beautiful place to camp it would be. Each camp area had its own number, so you knew where to go, had its own fire pit and barbecue. There was even a log pile that you could stock up for your campfire.

I would say it was only a quarter occupied, and reminded me of the time we went camping in the Adirondacks (if anyone wants to get me drunk I will tell you stories of hunting for bears in the middle of the night, and a racoon coming into camp to eat the remains of scrambled egg that we could not clean off the pan!).

Once again I braved a long drop toilet, and Emily had a lucky escape…..her new IPhone almost fell down the hole! Even if someone could have got it out, she would never have touched it again - let’s see if lessons have been learned…..

We carried on to Columbia Icefields Discovery Centre, where we had planned to take a trip out onto the Glacier. Sadly it was fully booked, so we settled for a trip to the Glacier Skywalk, which was super cool! It had a glass bottom, and even though you KNOW it is safe to stand on, that first step is a doozy!

As we walked around the skywalk, it was impossible not to be a little concerned, and to top it off, one lady decided to lie down for her photograph, and as she was getting to the floor, she broke her necklace and beads scattered all over the floor - imagine the scene - you are on a glass structure and you suddenly hear what you think is a cracking sound (beads hitting the floor) - what would you do? Yep, I did that.

To top things off a little herd of mountain goats were on the mountainside below our feet - I have included a pic to try and show how high they had climbed, but it does not really convey the drop well enough. They looked pretty scrawny, but they are molting for summer so their winter coat is starting to come away. There were a couple of babies too. They camouflage really well against the mountainside. As we were leaving on the tour bus (yep, no public parking so you are forced to take a tour) the driver had to stop the bus because of a goat in the road! He said in his 10 years of driving the buses he had only seen goats twice.

Of course, as we were driving our car away we were reminded of this, and just as well too as we rounded a corner to find another goat in the road - what you gonna do, hazard lights on and wait for it to cross!

On the Snowdome Mountain you can really see how thick the snow still is, It is as if it has just been dissected with a scalpel.

We continued up to Sunwapta Falls Mountain Lodge which is where we are booked in for two nights. It is quite a quirky place to stay - all log cabins and a great restaurant, as well as an artisan shop. They have cornered the market here as there is not another restaurant for 45 miles!

We are trying to plan our journey for tomorrow but:

• The cocktails are too good

• It is Canada Day tomorrow and Jasper will be completely snarled up, and that is the direction of travel wherever we decide to go.

Where we are is quite a dark area, so there is the chance of seeing the Northern Lights. We have found a website called Aurora Watch, but there is no alert for tonight - it is also quite cloudy (but warm). I mentioned that we would not see anything if it was cloudy, but Emily checked the weather app and piped up

‘Oh wait, there are no clouds forecast, only rain, we might be able to see something…’

‘Emily, where does rain come from?...’

We have ended the day with a Bison bolognese followed by a walk down to the Sunwapta Falls.

Emily has been in charge of the music today, so it has been Country, Country, Country and more Country - tomorrow is my turn, so Siouxsie and the Banshees here we come :)

Not sure when I will be able to post this as there is zero wifi or phone signal - we are literally int he middle of nowhere.... :)