Canada. Eh?

Our Trip To Canada! I put together some pics of our trip so you family and friends could check it out when you had time.

 We traveled in our van with the seats out and we had a pretty sweet set up:)

 The mountains in Canada are pretty impressive and my camera cannot capture the intensity of them.

 Zeph on his long morning run actually ran into two grizzly bears. Thankfully they were behind a large highway fence and were uninterested in him. 

 We entered Banff National Park and the mountains combined with the great greenery was beautiful. 

 There is an underground hot spring near Banff. It was pretty peaceful. They, of course, no longer let anyone got in it. 

 Ah, how times have changed...people wear less out to dinner. 

 We ran into some big horn sheep.

 We always seem to come across a thunderstorm or two on our adventures.

This crazy large castle of a hotel was built over 125 years ago and is fancy even today. 

We ran across a Clark's Nutcracker or two just before the ice fields. This clever bugger was pulling dead bugs off the cars.

 

 Slushy rain. It was refreshing to have some lower temps. 

 We reached the ice fields. It was a little disappointing for Zeph who has been their before to see how tourist companies have taken over and the park now refuses to let you on the ice for "safety reasons" but you can pay for a guided tour hiking all over the ice.

 Even though the ice had receded the glacier is still impressive. 

 Rock scraped by the glacier.

 The glacier overturns so much debris that the darker "wall" is actually ice covered in dirt.   

 Pretty waterfall on the way to Jasper National Park.

 

 At one point we came across a herd of Elk and there were three calves. Super cute in all their spots. 

 There were of course a lot of deer. 

 And of course there is always a black bear to be seen eating berries.

 We went to Pyramid lake and Zeph decided to go snorkeling. For some reason every tourist that crossed the bridge to the island thought it necessary to take a picture of Zeph. It seemed incomprehensible to anyone that you could swim in the lake. Oregonians I guess are immune to cold water. 

 At one point we ran across a baby mountain goat and its mother. Someone got too close to take a picture and the adorable, fluffy baby bleated the cutest little noise and scurried back to its mother. 

 We drove to Calgary and saw the Olympic Grounds (much smaller than they make it look on TV).

 Then we got sucked into a tourist trap of sorts but was still fun. We went to Heritage Park and explored their exhibits. The park was way overpriced but it made for a good afternoon. 

 They have a replica of a printing shop. The amount of work that went into making the paper was crazy. The machine that made sentences was huge and complex just to amount to a three lines. 

 We then crossed back over to Glacier National Park. 

 The National Parks are rich with railroad history. The rails got so steep in one area that they build a loop into the mountain to slow the trains down. 

 The squirrels are friendly.

 We camped at a beautiful campground with a rushing river nearby and a charming hike following the old railway. 

We headed home after Glacier. If anyone tells you that Canadians are always nice...it is not true in driving. But they are all pretty nice when face to face:)