Category: canada

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canada general travel

the day of two mooses

After visiting Dawson City, where I didn’t really take any photos for some reason (possibly related to my camera issues – although the 50mm is nice, it never focuses well and isn’t ideal for landscape type shots, and my lovely wide-angle lens isn’t focusing properly due to an incident with a slippery rock, and when I switched them over I got dust on my sensor again)… but anyway, Dawson City was very quaint and had Ye Olde Time boardwalks, and shops selling a vast variety of dead animals. We continued on to the Dempster Highway, which was in really good condition. Nice and dry and hard, the only problem was the random potholes of deepness. Given some of the photos I’ve seen of the Dempster (like Vik’s from his bike tour up there just recently), we were pretty lucky.

 

 

This was the day of the moose sighting at the appropriately named Two Moose Lake. It is suspected the moose sighting was brought about by the finding of this good luck charm/passport-photo (supposedly it’s someone’s father).

 

 

So we drove up the Dempster Highway, gazing at the beautiful scenery, stopping to skip through the fields of lupins and take photos, until we reached Eagle Plains, where the ubiquitous fireweed (with the purple flowers) surrounded our tents.

 

 

That evening we tried to escape the insects in the Eagle Plains Hotel, which has a lovely chandelier made of antlers, as well as several antlered heads on the wall and a complete caribou. We played shuffleboard and waited for it to get dark. Then we realised shuffleboard was actually a fairly boring game, particularly when noone can remember all the rules, and that it wasn’t actually going to get dark, at least not before the pub closed (there’s something fundamentally wrong about a pub that isn’t dark in the evening). We were kicked out at 11pm closing, in full daylight, and wandered off to try and sleep in our tents. That were full of light.

 

 

The sun set close to midnight, but rose again at 4.45am or so anyway, and there was still plenty of light around at dusk and dawn. I didn’t actually see any darkness the whole time we were there.

Categories
canada general travel

your life or your lupins, my lord

Memorable events from my first day in the Yukon, in order of happening:

    * A German girl playing Abba’s song S.O.S. on the piano in the Bed and Breakfast we’d stayed at, thus inspiring me to start learning how to play the piano (I’m easily excited).
[This was followed by an uneventful period in which we picked up a rental Subaru, looked at a gorge, picked Emma up from the airport, purchased food and camping things, then drove up towards Dawson City – which really isn’t a very exciting drive.]

 

 

    * Testing the bear spray in calm air, leading to a cloud of spray which slowly dissipated in all directions. This lead to much coughing and sneezing and teary eyes and cursing of Megan by everyone concerned.

 

 

    * Finding lupins in Moose Creek Campground (LUPINS!!!.. She’s bloody dying and all you bring us is lupins).

 

 

(So not that much happened – it’s quiet up there!)

Categories
canada general travel

a moose! a moose! (two mooses actually)

After about a year in Canada, I finally saw a moose while up in the Yukon. Two mooses. Conveniently located at Two Moose Lake, along the Dempster Highway.

 

Moose Two
 

Moose One

More tales of the Yukon coming soon, once I’ve had a little more sleep.

Categories
canada general travel

chipmunks and RVs – tales of the road

After living here for nearly a year, we finally visited Lake Louise and drove up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper on the weekend, in a bout of touristing with Mum. It wasn’t fatal, but camping and road trips sure are popular round here in Summer. We fought our way up the highway through streams of traffic, and battled for campground space with RVs. Vicious chipmunks attempted to eat our shoes and car tyres, and vicious panpipe and trumpet players attempted to assault our ears. We were not crushed by the relentless retreat of the Athabasca Glacier, and no tourists fell down a crevasse, despite crossing the barriers and dancing round on the glacier and posing for silly photos. Oh, and we also escaped unscathed from the man-eating Canada Geese at Maligne Lake.

 

Golden-mantled ground squirrel, at the Lake Agnes Teahouse near Lake Louise
 

 

Poppies outside the Lake Louise Chateau
 

 

Athabasca wuz ere in ’82
 

 

Train tracks outside of Jasper
 

Tomorrow we’re jumping on a ship and sailing up to the Yukon, where I’ll wrestle a moose, then tame it and ride it back to Canmore. And also drive up to Dawson City, and the Dempster Highway – well that’s the plan anyway.

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bikes canada general

one and a half hours of very little adrenaline and a nice cup of tea

Friday was supposed to be a climbing day, but a sick climbing partner meant that instead I lazed around the house for hours, then eventually took my bike out for a ride to the Nordic Centre, where all the madness of the 24 hours of Adrenaline was just beginning.

 

My bike narrowly avoids falling off the cliff as it admires the view out across the Bow River and Canmore from near the Nordic Centre
 

It’s too easy sometimes to be overcome by inertia and stay in the house, but as soon as you leave you wonder what on earth you were doing sitting inside, and then have trouble making yourself turn around for home. Half the cars round town seemed to have 2 or 3 bikes strapped to them, and the Nordic Centre was rapidly becoming covered in bikes, tents and shade shelters. It would have been tempting to enter the event, but for the fact it was also the World Solo 24 hour Championships, team entry cost $750, and it tends to sell out within a couple of days anyway – I just wasn’t fanatical or fit enough. I miss all the more casual MTB enduro events round in Australia though, and the dirt crits in Melbourne. It’s a pity there aren’t more bike events around here (or are there, and I just haven’t been able to find out about them?).