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canada general moosling snow trip reports

Return to Watridge Lake

The last time I passed by Watridge Lake I was 34 weeks pregnant, feeling too warm, with sore feet, and generally feeling as if I’d hiked far enough. We’d hiked through from Sunshine Meadows to Mount Assiniboine, and I’d already travelled 19-20km that day. I was kind of hoping for a travelator to take me home. Or a small helicopter. Perhaps a tame and friendly moose.

This time I returned with a baby on the outside, and a tame snow-shoer to pull along the Chariot.

 

 

It took us less than an hour to reach the lake! I was flabbergasted.

 

Watridge Lake

 

 

A happy moosling in his Chariot

 

After having lunch on the far side, we returned home.

 

I remember these signs all too well. Six months ago, they kept promising me that I was really near the end. “The car is this way”, they would say. But no mention of distance. It seemed to take forever. Obviously I’m not the only one to have felt this way.

 

On the drive back to Canmore we came across some moose! They were standing on the road, and weren’t entirely sure what to do as I drove slowly up to them. After running along the road for a while, in a remarkably sheep-like fashion, they worked out how to dive off into the trees (where they glared at us balefully).

 

Spray Lakes Road Moose

 

Categories
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

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.

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general

thanks ocean!

Now my crash pad looks much more exciting. AND it has a moose. What more could I ask for? (courtesy of the graphic stylings of Mr. Ocean)

gorgeous crash pad