After what seemed like an eternity of driving, we’re up in the Rockies. We arrived in Jasper last night to yet another thundershower, but the weather is much better today and we had our first real day of adventuring. Man, is Canada big.
Yesterday, when we got to Valemount, I was working through a “big, beautiful, boring” thing in my head, but today, it’s all gorgeous, all the time. We’ve buzzed into town this evening from our campsite because, get this, it’s been invaded by elk. We’ve been lectured quite severely on not approaching the elk, but when they have decided to not only graze at your campsite but to sit down right over there, you think, hmmm, best we do something else for a bit, maybe when we get back, they’ll have moved on to not necessarily greener, but other, pastures. Here’s hoping.
We spent the morning at Miette Hot Springs, soaking with the Brits and the Germans, and the afternoon hiking in Maligne Canyon, with different Brits and Germans. There are three types of people on vacation here, slackers like us, the hard core outdoorsy types, and retirees. It’s the retirees I envy because they have the best accommodation – those plush motor homes where they can open the windows and sit in their rolling living rooms eating dinner without slapping moose-quitos.
The bugs are huge and aggressive, the elk are huge and aggressive, the bears, well, I saw one and it was walking the other way, and it was huge, if not aggressive. It’s not exactly summer here, it’s late spring. The critters are crazy active and the wildflowers are everywhere. What we put up with in thundershowers is more than compensated for by the color in the meadows and the afternoon rainbows.