Northern Trails And Tales

It’s Saturday, our layover day and planned foray to the Rockies around Banff and Jasper. The weather wizard was rooting for us, and what had been forecast as showers and rain actually materialized as a cloudy morning and then a mostly sunny afternoon…. The morning started with a trip to Starbucks so we could access the internet. And so we did, a four buck vanilla bean mocha and a $7.50 Bell Internet fee later. For that kind of coin I could have called most of you! We did get e-mails from many of you and I got a chance to get the blog and quite a few e-mails out. Forget dollars and sense, I guess it was worth it….The approach to Banff from the plains is absolutely magnificent. There really isn’t much of a transition. Suddenly, the mountains loom before you and then–bang– loom over you. It’s truly impossible to try to convey the awesome grandeur they present. Big. They are. Tall. For sure. Overwhelming. Certainly. Majestic, too. Breath taking.
Well, close— and who knows if it’s the mountains or the emphysema? But just absolutely remarkable in the way they humble everything else. Standing in front of, say, Bow Summit, it isn’t hard to imagine some kid gazing up and planning to level it with his robotic atom powered dozer that he sketched in study hall just last week. Or maybe not. Anyway, a picture’s worth all the words I can conjure so I’ll try to get a few photos up on the blog within the next couple days…Lake Louise deserves promient mention. It’s located off the highway, maybe a thousand or so feet up a mountain. It’s not too big, about 200 acres maybe. But its tourmaline glacial waters tend to mesmerize against the gray and snow capped mountains. We drove the Icefield’s Parkway and saw some glaciers close up. What we never did see was much wildlife—and no bears at all. We did see a cute chipmunk and an emaciated squirrel. Also, something that resembled an obese crow that I decided was a magpie because I don’t know what a magpie looks like but suppose a crow afflicted with giantism might be close. We also saw two “somethings” tearing apart a carcass (unidentifiable, but bloody) but Dave and I couldn’t decide if they were coyotes, cougars, or wolves, though we did agree that they
were too far from home to be common house dogs. Maybe it was just the noon day sun, but none of the large animals we hoped for ventured forth though there were literally hundreds of signs warning us of their presence and the fact that it’s both unwise and illegal to feed them….. Hunger on the mind, we were too tired to cook supper so we had KFC. No extra crispy. No mashed potatoes. Fries only. And maybe that has something to do with why Kerry lost the election….