Saturday, July 20, 2019

We had a 13-hour day of wandering His wonders!

When we were planning our trip to Canada, our focus was on the more famous national parks--Banff and Jasper. But after we had made most of our reservations, Denisa read about something called "Kananaski Country."

Most of the locals call it K-Country, and since that will save a lot of typing, we will do the same. Besides, with all those syllables we never did get the pronunciation just right. We read that while the tourists were crowding into Banff National Park, the locals were hiking in K-Country. So our stay in Longview would keep us on our pre-determined route, but a one-hour car ride would allow us to explore K-Country like the locals. The first morning found Denisa snapping pictures of the Rocky Mountains on our drive.

Most were taken through the front windshield, because it was too cold to roll down the window to take pictures this morning. We are loving the cool weather we have found in Canada, as it was in the 40's during our drive. Not bad for July! After checking with the Discovery Center, we got great advice for hikes and kayaking. Then we headed down to Upper Kananaski Lake for some time on the water in our inflatable Sea Eagle kayak.

It was a perfectly still morning on the lake, and we couldn't believe how blessed we were to be on the water, surrounded by mountains!

Mark's view from the back of the boat is obscured by Denisa's hat, but you can still tell it's a nice place to be this morning.

We made our way through an opening around a peninsula, and the views opened up. We realized this lake was a lot bigger than it first looked to us.

With the perfectly calm water, the mountains were perfectly reflected in the lake.

We should have counted the number of times we said "Wow!" as we paddled around Upper Kananaski Lake.

We have definitely wandered into another of God's wonders!

It's hard to describe the color of the lake's water. It is clear, but has an electric teal green cast to it.

We casually paddled the full length of this sizable lake, and into the narrow neck at its most northern point. That's where we beached the boat to take a look over the dam.

Just on the other side of the dam we could get a look at Lower Kananaski Lake. Even though it's nice with the mountains running along its western shore, we recognize that we made the right choice when we decided to kayak the upper lake instead.

The advice we got at the information desk this morning was that the lower lake was better because it was less windy. But based on our glass-like paddle this morning, we weren't worried about the stiff winds that often kick up on the upper lake. We found out when we began paddling home that we should have been worried. That stiff wind was right in our face, as the waves were splashing water into our boat with every paddle.

We don't have any picturesque photos of the struggle we had getting back home. We finally beached on the side of the lake so we could empty the water out of the boat. It's hard to see in a picture, but we were sitting in several inches of cold glacial melt water and we were soaked.

Remember those 40-degree temperatures this morning? It's warmed up a little, but it's still uncomfortable to be completely wet when the air temperatures are cool. So we stayed on the beach a while, drying out in the wind.

We kept close to the mountain-protected edge of the lake, taking advantage of the wind break for the rest of the paddle back. It's nice to have drained out all those gallons of water from inside the boat. It was a struggle paddling against the wind, but we figured we had an extra 200 pounds of cargo on board with all that water. That made it even more difficult.

We took a few more pictures on our soggy trip back to the car. The mountains and lake look different now, but still very beautiful! We had been all alone on the lake earlier, but now we are joined by several boats.

We dried off the boat (and ourselves), and looked for a place to eat our lunch. This looks like a nice comfortable log overlooking the lake.

But then Mark found this pile of bear scat on the other side of the log. We think we'll look for a different place.

Bears definitely frequent this area. We are seeing warning signs at most trail heads and picnic areas.

So we finally settled for this nice bench, for views over lower Kananaski Lake for lunch.

As we left the lake area, we were greeted by our first herd of Rocky Mountain sheep.

They are coming down out of the mountains to lick up the salt used in melting the ice off the highway last winter.

These big horn sheep look a little shabby, as their winter coats are coming off in big tufts.

The babies born this spring are already bouncing around on the rocks, and learning about the man-made salt licks available from the highway.

That should be a full day of exercise and wildlife viewing. But we also wanted to go on a hike here in K-country since we've made an hour-long drive to get here. So we parked at the trail head of the Elbow Lake hike and pointed our boots straight up hill. We had lots of elevation gain through the forest until we finally got our first views of Elbow Lake.

The ranger had told us we could see views of a glacier from here, so we started circling the lake in search of it.

The path is muddy in places, and we got a fresh reminder that we are in bear country. This sizable bear print was in the fresh mud on the side of the lake trail.

We finally found this big bunch of ice on the side of the mountain on the left. After we spotted the glacier, we somehow decided we needed to make the hike to get closer.

It was an up-hill hike as our views of the glacier got closer,

and closer.

and closer.

We were tired as we made our way back down from the glacier. Mark is still hopping the creek stones with his usual grace, and Denisa is trying to keep up with him with her less graceful style.

Then we had one more view of Elbow Lake before we headed down to our car.

Along the way, we found this field of paintbrushes. We have been following this delightful little wildflowers since we first saw them in March in South Texas. They are just as lovely four months later in Canada. Now they are accompanied by long-stemmed dandelions.

It's been a long day in Kananaski Country! We left the house before 8 a.m., and we didn't get home until after 9 p.m. Our arms are sore from paddling hard, and our legs are tired from our 8-mile hike.    We'd say that was a pretty full day of outdoor fun for us! For some reason we don't get much sympathy from our working friends when we "complain" about our 13-hour days of wandering His wonders.

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