Today was our first sighting of the mountains! After a not very early start, a nice shower, some instant porridge and a photography session which scared off the giant rabbit, Nancy and Andy came over and we set off for the Rockies.
The journey should have been about 1.5 hours but for various reasons was much longer. First there were police cars blocking our way into the Transcanada Highway - we assumed because of an accident but according to CHQR it was because of a weapons complaint (some guy was standing by the road wielding a long-barreled shotgun!). Either way, we had to go on a quite long detour. Then we were held up as the traffic went down to one lane because a car on the hard shoulder was in flames. The fire engines arrived at the scene at pretty much the same moment but we managed to sneak through before they closed that bit of road too - quite quickly, in case the fuel tank blew up. By now it was high time for a little smackerel of something so we stopped in Canmore at a restaurant with a very nice veranda, sat ourselves down in the sun and and had one of those caesar salads which has all the appearance of a quite healthy lunch but allegedly has more calories than a big mac. (Still counts as one of my 5 a day). Finally, due to a combination of human error and google maps fail, it took us a quite a while to locate the canyon (although there was the perk of a herd of mountain goats crossing the road on one of our detours).
There was an initial concern that we might need to take bear spray with us on a hike but it turns out that Johnston's Canyon is really popular because it is accessible (once you find it) and is very well maintained so there are enough people on the trail to make it unlikely that bears would come anywhere near (this was a relief to know).
We climbed up to the lower falls and then on to the upper falls, following the uppy and downy trail along the route of the river. The sun was out and the sky was blue and the water was that turquoise colour that water from glaciers is and all was well with the world. We saw a posing chipmunk and a giant crow and no bears. It was lovely and warm with a nice cooling breeze (and sometimes light spray) from the river and the falls. The lower ones were quite small and the upper one was very tall and thin and wouldn't fit on a photo however hard I tried. The trail up was only 2.7 km but was fairly strenuous and had taken us at least an hour, and as it was getting quite late we didn't continue on to the ink pots which were another couple of miles up a much wilder path. We hiked back down and were rewarded with a bemusingly-named 'single' cone of very tasty ice cream (according to the girl there the doubles are 'really very large' but are served in the same size cones which would be almost worth paying for just to see).
The journey home was much smoother and we met Pat and Earl back at Nancy's where we had a bbq of super tasty Albertan steaks with salad and cool multi coloured potatoes.
Last night in Calgary with Andy...off to Rocky tomorrow...
The journey should have been about 1.5 hours but for various reasons was much longer. First there were police cars blocking our way into the Transcanada Highway - we assumed because of an accident but according to CHQR it was because of a weapons complaint (some guy was standing by the road wielding a long-barreled shotgun!). Either way, we had to go on a quite long detour. Then we were held up as the traffic went down to one lane because a car on the hard shoulder was in flames. The fire engines arrived at the scene at pretty much the same moment but we managed to sneak through before they closed that bit of road too - quite quickly, in case the fuel tank blew up. By now it was high time for a little smackerel of something so we stopped in Canmore at a restaurant with a very nice veranda, sat ourselves down in the sun and and had one of those caesar salads which has all the appearance of a quite healthy lunch but allegedly has more calories than a big mac. (Still counts as one of my 5 a day). Finally, due to a combination of human error and google maps fail, it took us a quite a while to locate the canyon (although there was the perk of a herd of mountain goats crossing the road on one of our detours).
There was an initial concern that we might need to take bear spray with us on a hike but it turns out that Johnston's Canyon is really popular because it is accessible (once you find it) and is very well maintained so there are enough people on the trail to make it unlikely that bears would come anywhere near (this was a relief to know).
We climbed up to the lower falls and then on to the upper falls, following the uppy and downy trail along the route of the river. The sun was out and the sky was blue and the water was that turquoise colour that water from glaciers is and all was well with the world. We saw a posing chipmunk and a giant crow and no bears. It was lovely and warm with a nice cooling breeze (and sometimes light spray) from the river and the falls. The lower ones were quite small and the upper one was very tall and thin and wouldn't fit on a photo however hard I tried. The trail up was only 2.7 km but was fairly strenuous and had taken us at least an hour, and as it was getting quite late we didn't continue on to the ink pots which were another couple of miles up a much wilder path. We hiked back down and were rewarded with a bemusingly-named 'single' cone of very tasty ice cream (according to the girl there the doubles are 'really very large' but are served in the same size cones which would be almost worth paying for just to see).
The journey home was much smoother and we met Pat and Earl back at Nancy's where we had a bbq of super tasty Albertan steaks with salad and cool multi coloured potatoes.
Last night in Calgary with Andy...off to Rocky tomorrow...
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