Well, I've been to Paradise...

...and now I've been to me as well.

Some people say we travel in order to find ourselves. Looks like I've got that out of the way. Welcome to Wayne everybody, located just outside Drumheller in the Alberta badlands. As you can see it's not exactly a bustling metropolis. In fact some describe it as a ghost town, although I prefer the term boutique myself. Or fun-size even, like those little Mars bars you get. Apparently I was a pretty big mining community back in the day, but things have quitened down a bit since then.

Wayne was the highlgiht of a 2 day trip around the prairies I went on after leaving Banff, finishing in Calgary. Ostensibly the main reason I chose it was to visit the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, as the badlands are one of the best sources of fossils in the world. But Wayne was a pretty good bonus, and I was waiting very excitedly to get there all day. The museum was fantastic, seeing pretty much all of the most famous dinosaurs I used to read about as a kid, T-Rex, Triceratops, Allosaurus, Stegasaurus, I was in geek heaven. They don't let you help out on the digs any more though which I found a bit disappointing, would have liked to do that.



The landscape's probably about as big a contrast to the Rockies you can get, looking out over the endless plains and gentle hills of the prairie you could hardly believe there could be anything as big as mountains out there. But every now and then you'll come across some dramatic feature of the badlands, winding canyons and river valleys carved out of the plains by the meltwaters of glaciers, banded with the remnants of ancient sea floors. And hoodoos too.





We also visited a place called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, used by the Blackfoot people to hunt buffalo. When the buffalo herds would gather in the right place, they would sneak up to them disguised as wolves and scare them into stampeding. They'd channel them towards certain spots where the buffalo couldn't see the cliffs ahead and would fall over, with obvious results. The museum there's really good, built into the cliff itself, you start at the top and work your way down just like the buffalo. But using the stairs. It's really interesting, but quite sad seeing how white people's arrival affected the area. The buffalo used to cover the plains in their millions, a single herd could take days to pass by. Now there's barely any left because they were recklessly slaughtered, people would actually shoot from passing trains and leave them to rot. The Glenbow Museum in Calgary also tells a lot more about the history of the Blackfoot, a depressingly familiar story of how the population was decimated by disease, alcoholism and generally screwed over by the arrival of the Europeans. Like New Zealand a lot of native cultures are starting to make a bit of a resurgence so hopefully things will get better for them over time.



Calgary itself is quite a nice city, I had planned to go back into the Rockies but felt I needed to take a bit more time in Calgary so stayed there for about a week and a half. It actually reminds me quite a bit of Brisbane, with it's setting along the Bow River (the same one which runs from Lake Louise and Banff), but there's enough grassy hills around town to remind you that you're near the prairies. The city always looks particularly nice in the late afternoon sun, with the yellow grass on the hills and the trees turning gold as fall sets in.





It's very modern though, and I'd really like to experience something a bit more of the old West, as this used to be real cowboy country. That will have to wait until next year though, I'd quite like to be here for the Calgary Stampede as well - it looks like a lot of fun. But now I'm heading east pretty quickly so I can catch the fall in Ontario and Quebec, where it's probablty the most spectacular. So here'll be less landscape shots of mountains from me for a while, but more macro ones of various coloured leaves to look forward to. Like this one.



I wrote most of this on the bus across the prairies from Calgary to Regina, capital of Saskatchewan (Regina rhymes with angina, so you have to be a bit careful using it in conversation - if people haven't heard of it they can completely misunderstand you. If you catch my drift.) It's an 11 hour trip and flat all the way so while I did enjoy the scenery I didn't think I'd be missing too much while I was writing. It's a pleasant enough town not much there in terms of attractions really but it has quite a nice small town kind of feel, and I was quite happy just wandering through it's streets and around the Wascana Centre parklands. There's a few lakes there which at the moment are pretty crowded with Canada Geese flying south for the winter (well, generally south, most of the time they seem to be going in any old direction). That's pretty cool to see. Saskatchewan is also known as the Land of the Living Skies, and I have to say the sunset I watched didn't disappoint. I had a good spot, on about the only hill in Regina (I could see another one off in the distance but I think it's just outside the city) it's maybe 20m high, if that.



So I spent a pleasant few days there, arrived in Winnipeg today and after a few days here will be flying to Toronto so I can go on a trip up to Algonquin Park, hopefully spot me a moose and do some leaf peeping.

(Oh and in case you're wondering, Paradise is in New Zealand, not far from Queenstown and Glenorchy. They filmed part of Lord of the Rings there. Like pretty much everywehre else in NZ)

The Rockies!

Yep, made it to the Rockies, so lots of mountain photos to go with this blog. Last time I wrote I was in Revelstoke, from there I went to Field, a tiny town of about 300 people in Yoho National Park. It's in a really beautiful valley along the banks of the Kicking Horse River (named after a horse who kicked some guy in the head), with a great little hostel which is pretty much brand new. It's only small, only fits about 40 people so it's like having your own house for a few days. Being the Rockies it's generally a good idea to have a hiking partner, due to bears (on some trails it's even illegal to travel in a group of less than 4), so I was lucky that I'd already met Tom (from the UK) in Revelstoke. Our first challenge was actually getting to the trails, they're all at the end of long access roads which usually adds at least an extra 20km if you want to walk it, so we had to try our hand at hitch-hiking - I'd never tried it before (and won't be making a habit of it, it's kind of boring and you have to deal with a fair bit of rejection, which gets a bit depressing), so I was pretty impressed with myself when the very first car I signalled pulled over. To tell us they were full. You know, thanks and everything, but why bother? Anyway, we only had to try it a few times, enough to experiment with a variety of techniques though, looking hopeful, pleading, sad, tired etc - we had quite a dramatic range by the end of it all, and had even gotten quite picky about exactly wchich cars we would accept lifts from (no Chryslers thanks, they're ugly). Our record pick up time was about 8 minutes, which I thought was pretty good, but most of the people passing by were there to hike themselves and they're generally pretty nice people so it wasn't really that difficult.



So first stop was the Yoho Valley, with Takkakaw Falls (which means 'it is wonderful' in the Cree language) - they're the second highest in Canada and an impressive sight. From there we hiked up over the Yoho Pass and down to Emerald Lake, which was a pretty good day's walk, with a great view coming down towards the lake. The next day we just went back up to the falls and wandered around the valley up there. It's kind of funny, whenever you first set out on a hike you tend to have bears very much in mind (despite Australia's reputation for dangerous animals there really aren't many that will just leap out of the forest and attack you, so it take some getting used to) - even thought they're not generally a problem in Yoho you still have to make plenty of noise to let them know you're around. So you tend to talk UNUSALLY LOUDLY, to the point where you're shouting things at each other like, 'WOW, THIS IS REALLY AMAZING, IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL HERE - AND SO PEACEFUL!!' Or you wander around clapping and yelling whenever you approach a corner. It feels a bit ridiculous but you do get used to it, and once you've walked far enough you still go through the motions but you can't spare much energy to be worried about bears.



Afterwards Tom had to head off to Vancouver, but I was able to get a lift with a couple from Belgium who were heading out to a place called Lake O'Hara. It's a specially protected area - there's a bus (usually booked out well in advance) which will take in a limited number of people to a campsite or you can hike the 11km access road in there, which we did. That was a nice enough walk in itself, but Lake O'Hara itself was just stunning. We had perfect weather that day, and I don't think I've ever seen anywhere quite so beatiful before, and the others agreed that it was probably the nicest place they'd seen so far in all their travels.



We hiked a loop trail which climbed from one side of the lake, past 3 perched lakes to glacier-fed Lake Oesa, which sits at the base of some truly stunning mountains. From there we crossed some scree slopes beneath the cliffs of Yukness Mountain to the Opabin Plateau, which features a string of another 4 lakes which also feed into O'Hara, and then back down to O'Hara itself. The whole day was absolutely amazing, everywhere you looked was a picture-perfect vista, so I took pictures of them all obviously, but they don't come even close to doing it justice, there's just no way to communicate the sense of awe you get in place like that in a tiny little photo.





Once we got back down to the lake we just lay on the jetty taking in the view for about an hour, listening to a guy practising on the fiddle. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. And best of all, you can get the bus back down without a reservation so we were spared the 11km downhill walk.



After Lake O'Hara, it was on to Lake Louise for a few days, which while not as spectacular as O'Hara is still quite pretty. I hiked up to the Plain of Six Glaciers beyond the lake, which is pretty impressive (it's got six glaciers).



I also went up to nearby Moraine Lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, as the first time I came to Canada it was mostly hidden by clouds and it's a pretty iconic landscape. So I was lucky to have decent weather, saw all 10 peaks, and was there early enough to have the lake mostly to myself for a while before all the tour buses arrived. Will get back there at some stage as there's some really good hikes I'd like to do but it's one of those places you need a large group because of the grizzlies.



So that brings me here to Banff. I like Banff a lot, while it can get pretty crowded in the middle of summer it's not too at the moment. It's in a really beautiful setting along the banks of the Bow River and surrounded by some really nice mountains - Cascade and Sulphur Mountains, and my personal favourite Mt Rundle, which I've photographed from just about every angle. There's plenty of nice hikes accessible from right in town too, so I've done just about all of those - along the Bow River, out to the Vermilion Lakes, the Hoodoo Trail and up to Tunnel Mountain.



Banff's also a pretty good place for wildlife spotting - for elk in particular which often hang around town to get away from the wolves and bears out in the rest of the park (and who can blame them really). I've seen a few elk around town here, just passed another one on my way back to the hostel tonight actually and there's a young buck who I've seen around a few times. Yesterday though I was walking out to Sundance Canyon and I came across two big bull elk grazing beside the trail, was very careful walking past them (and to be honest I let some other people coming the other way go past first just to gauge what sort of mood the elk are in). They didn't seem fussed to have anyone around though, and we were all careful to keep as much distance from them as possible. So I had a look at the canyon and headed back down the trail, where I had to pass them again. Now around this time of year they're actually in rut so the males in particular can be quite aggressive - they're actually the most dangerous animals in the park. I got a great photo of me (very slowly and carefully) walking past one of them.



You can see he's looking up in this pic, right after this he wandered over to me and started following right behind me, pretty much right behind my shoulder. Now he was probably taller than me, not even counting his antlers, and started making this kind of clicking noise. I didn't know if he was curious, angry or horny and only one of those was going to have a happy ending. I was also painfully aware that I'd recently had a brownie and had wiped some crumbs off on the back of my pants and was hoping he wasn't smelling that, but luckily he lost interest and I went on my way unmolested, but it was quite exciting for a while.

It wasn't really scary (although I'm well aware it could have been serious if he'd decided he didn't like me after all) - I'd nearly had a heart attack a few days before when I was walking up the road to the hostel and saw a black shape on all fours rummaging around in the bushes right beside the road. It's a good thing I didn't have bear spray with me, as I probably would have given him a good dose right before I noticed his baseball cap and realised it was some guy picking up trash or gardening or maybe just doing it to give people like me a nasty shock. I mean really, what sort of person crawls around in the forest wearing dark clothing in known bear territory? You're just asking for a pepper spraying.

Anyway, don't want to end on a negative note, so here's a photo of Mt Rundle (he's got some fresh snow on) to wrap things up. I do like this mountain.