elk or mule deer?


Maligne Lake



mountain goat


mama grizzly! two cubs nearby


rock etched by glacier


glacier, foreground and tiny cloud hugging mountain


day 20, 21, 22 Edmonton to Hinton, Alberta 177 miles
Hinton to Sunwapta Falls 125 miles
Sunwapta Falls to Golden, British Columbia 155 miles
june 20, 21, 22

three days without internet access means a BREAKNECK tour to catch up on our journey through some more brilliant National Parks.

Andrew, the darling, the honorable, the mensch, did laundry in Edmonton (washed and dried all our soaked and muddy stuff that was in plastic bags since the Terrible Bicycling in the Rain Incident at Elk Island) while i bloggggged. then we shopped for food and headed west.

we CAMPED outside of Hinton at Little Sundance, a remote and "undeveloped" (read: pit toilets but CLEAN pit toilets) campground. we got there late but it stayed light until 11:30 which, by the way, i am wanting to wonder outloud - how do people up here in the northern hinterlands EVER go to bed at a decent hour when it is LIGHT ALL THE TIME? most perplexing. we stay up until midnight every night and then i often wake up with the dawn. then i sleep some more.

then we got in the tent and it RAINED LIKE HELL but we stayed dry and warm. good tent. good good tent.

june 21:
by the next morning, it had stopped raining. we had coffee and tea and oatmeal and got the wet fly put into a plastic bag, took down the tent and packed the truck JUST before it rained again. great timing. happy campers. if we can BEAT the rain, we don't even mind (so much) if it rains. except sometimes it feels like it rains all the time. and that i mind. a little. still.

we entered gorgeous Jasper National Park and made the mistake of going to Jasper itself - a crammed little tourist town full of knotty pine chalets and overpriced unremarkable food. i almost had a cultural attack (one of those moments when i cannot stand what we humans have become and experience a crushing depression that can last for a few hours) but i pulled myself back from the brink. we left the town and went to Maligne Canyon to see the first of many falls then up up up to Maligne Lake. we drove for the rest of the day through mountains that became more and more serious, as in ROCKIES, wow, big tall snowcapped, marching in an impressive row, one after the next. we spotted one horned animal that i think is a mule deer and Andrew thinks is an elk and finally flopped at the Sunwapta Falls Resort Hotel - king bed, fireplace, bathtub and two people FAR too exhausted to really enjoy the amenities beyond saying - wow. this is different than camping.

june 22:
awoke today and biked down the road to Sunwapta Falls. huge thundering waters, hypnotic and wild. the rest of the day was an incredible parade of moving events:
a black bear
MY FIRST MOUNTAIN GOAT
MY FIRST GLACIER
and
MY FIRST GRIZZLY BEARS (a mama and two cubs)

the animals were incredible but both bear experiences were marred slightly by the insanity of the other witnesses. cars acting totally irresponsibly, stopping in the middle of the road to videotape, people, standing in the middle of the road, very circuslike and another moment of embarrassment at being part of my species. i shot as many photos of the other people shooting photos as i did the wildlife. almost.

but the ATHABASCA GLACIER dwarfed us all in the most satisfying way, put to rest all the petty, greedy, consumption-driven craziness i experienced in seeing the bears. instead, i stood at the edge of this massive ancient ice (called either the "toe" or a "tongue" of the glacier), and felt like i was in church. happily daunted, feeling tiny in the best way, i bow down to yet another emanation of the force of water that we have seen everywhere on our trip. lakes (Lake Louise was another devastatingly beautiful sight today - how, how HOW does the water become that color?), rivers, falls, rain, ponds and now glaciers.

i am in awe, exhausted and ready to tuck in at Mary's Motel (more water falling from the sky) in Golden, British Columbia.