Jasper and Banff National Parks

Since we left "the North", we've replaced all four tires on the van, placed Ian's photography in a gallery in Dawson Creek, and met up with our friend Randy in Banff National Park. Highlights of our travel from the Dempster to Banff included seeing about 40 buffalo along the highway in northern British Columbia, and going to the natural hot springs in Leard Hot Springs Provincial Park.

Skinny caribou we saw along the highway in BC.

The forest fires in the news are real and very big! Apparently British Columbia is having a really rough summer in that regard and there were many fire bans.

We were also fortunate to meet up with some friends we'd met in Squamish in Whitehorse, and made some new friends as well! We met two Germans (blog) who are on the road for 1001 days and are travelling all over. They have a fantastic RV (sponsored by Hobby).

Ian and I spent several days climbing at 'back of the lake' in Lake Louise. We were able to get on a bit of trad, but mostly sport climbing - which was nice since we haven't really climbed sport for months. Lake Louise is of course beautiful, but interesting too - look at all the canoes in the photo. We counted upwards of 28 canoes at one point on the lake. Now, think about how much you would be willing to pay for an hour canoe rental....

...Rentals were $50/ hour or $40/half hour!!

Banff was gorgeous. Here are some of Ian's shots...

We saw wildlife, more bears and coyotes as well as some big horn sheep.

Ian went swimming in Horseshoe lake, the water was quite chilly. I have video of Ian, but will need to look into how to load those to the website.

Randy and I were able to do several nice hikes. I was lucky to have his company for the days while Ian was up in the Bugaboos with Jon (a friend we met in Squamish).

In a blog post coming soon will be Ian's snowy adventures in the Bugaboos! :)