Canada, Eh?

Spontaneity

As with most of my adventures with Julian Bialowas, this one happened quite quickly. 2 hours following my tweet of an ambitious to-do list, I had a plane ticket to Calgary. Boom. Adventure. Such excite.

( If anyone wants to work on the rest of this list with me, give me a shout @kylefrost! )

WildFireS

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of our rental car as Julian drives through what he assures me is a beautiful stretch of the Canadian Rockies. My face is plastered against the window. Only problem, I can’t see a thing. Wildfires in Banff have settled a thick layer of smoke over the mountains. Occasionally the dramatic shadow of a peak will break through the haze, teasing me with brief views.

Kananaskis

We camped at Kananaskis lakes, and drove the entire length of Highway 40 through the Spray Lakes area. Even with the occluded views, we made the best of a bad situation. I kept my eyes on the clouds for any hint of blue sky.

banff National Park

Miraculously, around the time we reached Banff, the haze slowly started to clear! In the interest of maximizing our time, we hit all the (gorgeous) tourist traps. Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, although crowded, were magnificent.

Mt Rundle

We managed to hoof it back south just in time to catch an incredible sunset over Mount Rundle. The classic Banff shot didn’t disappoint. I’m not sure I can put into words how stoked I was that the smoke cleared up.

Calgary

After an epic day on Northover pass, we did some more exploring around Calgary and Alberta. We made the drive out to Drumheller to check out the Royal Tyrell Musesum, which has a collection of more than 130,000 fossils! The museum is located in the Badlands area of Alberta, a stark contrast to the mountains we visited earlier in the trip.

The Front range

On my final evening in Calgary, we had the pleasure of meeting up with the fantastic Elyse Bouvier and her friend Sherah. We checked out Elbow Falls for sunset, and that quickly turned into a mad dash photoshoot driving through the front range to catch every available bit of golden light.

All in all, this was a fantastic trip. We packed a ton of stuff into the few days that I had to explore. I’ll be back to bag more of those peaks in Banff and Kananaskis for sure.

Adventure awaits. What are you waiting for?