Road trip to snowshoeing

What a day! Darrell and Mojo's snowshoeing adventure.....Charley couldn't come this time but we will get him out on snowshoes yet.

We headed out to Bow Summit - which is past Lake Louise on the road to Jasper...but still in Banff National Park. The skies were grey but it was beautiful and the clouds were interesting.

Then you see me in my snowshoes and off we go up, up, up through the trees. You can see from one of the photos of Darrell that it was steep in parts.

Darrell was very kind and he broke the trail when we were in new snow & it was deep snow too as I found out when I lost a snowshoe and went in up to my thigh. That is Peyto Lake way down in the valley. Several photos of it....Then we met the grouchy grouse. It was a Spruce Grouse that followed us along part of the trail. Habituated to being fed by tourists no doubt, he came right up to us and made very interesting sounds - a sort of purring-clicking sound. When we didn't feed him he seemed to get cross and he got on the back of Darrell's snowshoes and started pecking at his legs. I didn't get any photos of him attacking us....

We met him again on the way back and he started pecking at me. He was either being territorial or he really was mad we didn't feed him.

There is a photo of Bow Lake in a whiteout on the way back. The driving was not that bad...just that one spot where the wind swept across the lake. 

Tuckered out tonight after a wonderful mountain snowshoe trek.

Hope to go out again next week.

Silver from blue

There was blue sky and Vermillion Lakes were calling to me. I had finished reading an astounding novel called Swimming Home (and finished writing my review of it) so I answered the call of the sky and mountains. I took photos of hte brilliant blue sky, the mountains clad snow and then the clouds blew in from the west and everything turned silver and grey - but still beautiful. These are a few of the pictures....including one which shows another photographer on second lake.

The first four pictures are of the Fairmont range in the east. Then grey cloaked Mt.Rundle. Then the photo with the open water and the photgrapher show the westerly view. The next photo shows waves of silver water which were whipped up by a brisk wind. 

I live in the mountains.

Why is she writing that you wonder...because it is still an amazement to me. 

 While the winter dormancy of Vermillion Lakes is beautiful, I so look forward to the spring and the beaver pond area being full of warblers and kinglets - so many of them it is like a swarming of bees.

And, I long for the return of the pair of kestrels to their nest in the hollow tree, the bald eagles, the herons, the migrating swans and all the ducks and the pair of loons.....

I thought I might spy a moose today - I have seen two out here in the past year - but I didn't. 

Still it was a glorious afternoon. 

A New Year

These are a few pictures of the wanders Charley and I were able to have over the holidays - elk at Cascade Pond, steam and snow at Vermillion Lakes (steam from the sulpher springs' hot water meeting the ice and snow) and the last two photos of mountains this morning when I walked out early with a friend's dog..
Everyone else still sound asleep in bed after a very late New Year's Eve of stupendous food (Charley our chef outdid himself, a terrine of 3 kinds of chocolate with pistachio sauce after a meal of ham & scalloped potatoes and Thai Chicken whew!) and mountains of hilarious laughter, I don't know when I laughed so hard and for so long - I mean hours of laughing.....
Blessed with friends I delight in seeing in this place while in my heart, friends who I hold close though they are far away. The mountain in last picture seems to be the new year rising clean and bright against a spacious and brilliant blue sky.
May your new year be full of light. x mojo

The zamboni cleaning the skating rink in the middle of town ~ on my way to work in the morning I stopped to take some photos. I love the rink ~ even though I never learned to ice skate. I love it because it gives a beating heart of community to this touristy town. I see neighbours as well as visitors all enjoying this quintessentially Canadian activity. Every time I see the rink I smile. Games of shinny, new little skaters hanging on to chairs being pulled around the rink as they take to the ice for the first time, couples swooping and gliding, and late night skates under a brilliant moon...ah love the mountain winters.

love the prairies and the best part may be the badger

We spent some of our holidays in the badlands around Drumheller and also in Dinosaur Provincial Park.

I love the prairies! and I love the badlands!...more photos of the landscape soon but, though it might seem odd, the best part of the holiday (for me if not for Charley) may have been the serendipitous sighting of a badger. We missed the turn off for Horse Thief Canyon and so we pulled into a road that led to an oil 'farm' or something and stopped to look at the map. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement and looked to see a very large creature digging in the verge by the road. We watched as it dug a huge hole, which eventually was larger than its whole body. It was a badger and I was thrilled as I had never seen a one before (except in all the English books I read as a child and Canadian badgers are definitely bigger). So we sat and watched this badger for a very long time. It was obviously digging into rodent warrens since would turn its head to listen and then it would dig furiously. Then it would come rapidly out of the hole run forward about 10 inches and dig furiously there. Then (and this was confounding - so now I will have to research badger behaviour) it would then back into the smaller hole and fill it in and run back to the big hole and dig furiously again. We were there for about 30 mintues watching. I saw a mouse jump up and run behind the badger and he (she?) did not see it, so it escaped. Such a lot of hard work and no meal by the time we left. Good hearing maybe but not good eyesight.

The pictures after the badger show his front yard - prairie and sky as far as the eye can see.... and his backyard - badlands canyons for miles and miles.

The dinosaur statue was at the corner of the street where we were staying.

Birthday Girl in Banff

Out for dinner on my
birthday with good friends - Kathy and Claudia. Good laughs, good food, good night.
(For some reason the blog has made all sorts of changes and I am still trying to figure out how to do what I used to so on it).

What a night

A night of glorious music in an equally glorious setting.

Emmylou Harris at the Banff Centre's open air Shaw Amphitheatre.

Surrounded by Mountains, surrounded by good friends, surrounded by air filled with music.

Emmylou Harris, beautiful songbird, sang for almost two hours backed by a band of great musicians.

At one point, ravens flying down the valley at dusk to roost, flew behind the stage and formed a lovely tableau behind Emmylou - whose voice soared like the birds.

Oh what a lovely evening.

Charley was able to take wonderful pictures from close to the stage.