Rocky Mountains

We took the overnight bus from Vancouver to Banff, in the middle of the Rocky mountains. The journey was dull, except that just after we were woken up in the morning (at 6am!), we saw a black bear on the railway tracks next to the road. We think he was having his morning dump.

Since being in the mountains we have seen lots of Elk and deer, mountain goats, a moose, two more black bears, manbearpig*, an eagle, and the very rare endangered Banff snail!

*Graeme might have dreamt that one.

We spent a few days in Banff going on fairly short hikes and rewarding ourselves with lots of food and beer, and a long soak in the hot springs. One day we hired a car and Debbie mastered the art of driving an automatic, and on the 'wrong' side of the road.

On our last morning in Banff we awoke to find everything covered in a thick layer of snow. Despite this the bus made it through to Lake Louise with no problems, a sure sign we aren't in the UK!

We continued onto Jasper via the Columbia Icefield, where we took a special bus out onto the glacier, and walked out on the ice. It was snowing at the time and we lasted about 5 minutes, during which time Graeme pushed Debbie into a snowdrift, and Debbie bombarded Graeme with snowballs as revenge, so we were both cold and wet for the rest of the trip.

In Jasper we hired a car again, as there is no such thing as local public transport out here. This time it was a brand new car and Debbie was the first to drive it (what were they thinking???). We drove out to the Maligne Canyon, and stayed the night in a rustic hostel without running water where the owner told us that he had seen a grizzly bear the night before, we didn't see the grizzly but we did see another black bear.

On Friday we are taking a train to Prince Rupert, on the border with Alaska.