Mood Shots

Scenes from the Canadian Rockies

Banff Town

The town of Banff at dusk with it's beautiful mountain backdrop. Mike loves outdoor camping and adventure stores as do I, so we had fun perusing the fleeces and other goodies. Ally found us a worthy new addition for the printer's tray to symbolize our Canada trip - a little, jade bear.

Yikes!!!!

We came home to a rather scary house guest.

London Mood Shots

Photos of the London Eye taken (at speed) from the tube on the way home. Nice to see London in a moment of grace. We left Vancouver at 10 pm Sunday night and arrived in London Gatwick at 5 pm Monday evening. Then a two and half hour train trip back to Cambridge. Now for a good nights sleep - to be fresh for work tomorrow.

A big thank you to our lovely family in Canada

In the top photo, doing what Canadians do best - enjoying a delicious cup of coffee (at Whistler). No-one makes coffee better than the Canadians. In the photo below, we're enjoying Vancouver's best hamburgers by the ocean on our last day. Trish, Mike, Keira and Kyle were absolutely fantastic hosts and it was thanks to them that we enjoyed so many great sights and experiences. Thanks guys - you were wonderful. We can't wait to see you all in Australia and show you around there.

Lake Louise

Known as the "Jewell of the rockies", this enormous lake provides stunning views of the Victoria Glacier nestled behind it. We also visted the famous Lake Louis hotel built in 1890 as a back water tea house. That's where the photos of the elk heads were taken. We preferred seeing the live versions at Jasper.

Morraine Lake

If there is a lake in heaven, I would imagine it would look something like this. Shimmering emerald waters, dotted with the occasional kayak, fringed by tall, regal pine trees, surrounded by towering glaciers and soaring mountain peaks. If I ever grow tired of life, I'll book myself off for a month and come here to meditate. Absolutely beautiful.

Canadian Critters

The Canadian Rockies is home to a plethora of wildlife and we saw lots of it.

On our first day in the park, we sighted a black bear on the road which caused me great excitement as it is on my life list. Then to crown the experience, we spotted a bear and two cubs the following night. Unfortunatley in both cases, we were too excited and the experience too fleeting to take a photo.

Not so with the big horn sheep - the male above posed beautfully for the camera.

The photo of the Columbian Ground Squirrel was taken at our camp site in Banff - they were pesky little fellows who dive bombed pine cones from the tree early every morning onto Trish and Mike's camp trailer - waking them up to what seemed like the battle of Britain. When we left, we swept a hundred cones off the trailer roof and then we watched as a particularly energetic little squirrel (phographed above) retrieved every single one of them to take off to his nest near by.

The Golden Mantled Ground Squirrels posed for us at Morraine Lake. We climbed a rock stack for better views of the lake and these cute little creatures kept popping up from the rocks just above us, peering down curiously,

The elk stag was photographed at our camp site at Jasper. He was there with his concubine of over ten females. It's rutting season so he was very energetic and kept charging about, rounding up his ladies, even coming between our tent and trailor to do so. So we had some very close up views indeed. But we had to be cautious too - the wardens warned us that it wasn't a good idea to get between a rutting elk and the objects of his affection.

The juvenile Osprey was photographed on a nest on a bridge near Banff. These beautiful birds are quite common here, thanks to the abundance of fish in the lake. The Clarke's Nutcracker was a lively and very arial bird that is common in the forests. The Loon is a symbol of "wild Canada" - it's beautiful, playful and has a wonderful call.

In total, I saw 15 new species of birds in the Rockies (thanks to my long suffering and very patient family who were very good about stopping off at lakes for me to do some twitching!)

Columbian Ground Squirrel



Big Horn Sheep





Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel





Elk






Clarke's Nutcracker





Common Loon





Osprey


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Birds seen in Rockies

• Bald Eagle
• Common Loon
• Red Necked Grebe
• Western Grebe
• Barn Swallow
• Great Blue Heron
• American Crow
• Red-breasted Nuthatch
• DArk Eyed Junco
• Yellow Rumped Warbler
• Clarke's Nutcracker
• Black-billed Magpie
• American Goldfinch
• Brewer's Blackbird
• Common Merganser

New birds we saw in Vernon

• American Goldfinch
• Common Merganser
• Californian Quail
• White-tailed kite
• Northern Flicker
• American robin
• Redwinged Blackbird
• Belted Kingfisher
• Common Yellowthroat
• Red-tailed Hawk
• American Wigeon
• Kildeer

Camping Life in The Rockies

Go Kyle Go!

Went to watch Kyle play in a basketball final. Our first live game and it was an absolute cracker. Neck and neck right till the end when a couple of penalties from Kyle (see the photo) edged his team to a 39 - 35 win. Very exciting and great that we could be there to see it. The lovely girl in the photo with Kyle is his girlfriend, Tasha.

Kayaking in Vernon

We've met up with Mike and Trish in Vernon - wonderful to see them again. Delight of delights, we also got to finally meet my elusive cousin , Kyle. What a wonderful, charming (and very tall!) guy. Mike took us for a paddle in one of the local lakes today which was a tremendous fun and a very good work out. Cherry on the top was seeing Osprey and Megansers (a type of Canadian duck.)

Vancouver

Wow, what a gorgeous, fabulous city!! I can see why it is routinely voted as one of the top three cities in the world to live in. We met up with Keira at her flat on Friday evening and spent a wonderful weekend with her. So great to see my lovely, bubbly cousin again! She lives in a very nice flat downtown that is really central. We got to sleep on her bed; she on the floor. How's that for family spirit! She absolutely rocks as a guide and showed us all the sites with great relish. We had a fantastic time visiting Granville Island and Stanley Park and slogging up the "Grouse Grind." Also went shopping to capitalise on the power of the mighty pound in Canada - and had our first true "sushi" meal - a very fishy (and delicious) "all you can eat" affair.