{"id":2472,"date":"2011-08-07T19:35:13","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T19:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtnmacaw.wordpress.com\/?p=2472"},"modified":"2011-08-07T19:35:14","modified_gmt":"2011-08-07T19:35:14","slug":"banff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/?p=2472","title":{"rendered":"Banff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Banff National Park is our most favorite place of all time, and we got to visit there for a few days last week.\u00a0 It’s been at least six years since we were last there, and we were curious if the scenery would still blow us away as much as it had in the past.\u00a0 Yep, it still is fantastic.\u00a0 So much so, in fact, that we are already planning to visit the parks again next year.<\/p>\n

We entered the parks at the Radium Hot Springs entrance, and immediately began climbing into the mountains.\u00a0 On the main highway three adult female Bighorn Sheep, with two babies in tow, were walking down the middle of the road.\u00a0 A bit further past them, a good size Black Bear was munching grass on the side of the road.\u00a0 When we reached the first overlook, I took a series of pictures showing the mountains.\u00a0 These aren’t the big magnificent mountains in the Bow River Valley that runs through the middle of Banff National Park, but they were a sign of good things to come.<\/p>\n

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Panoramic view from the first overlook in the provincial park that borders the national parks to the west. This looks north, and the following pictures go from north to south.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The sides of the mountains show their glacier-influenced past.<\/p><\/div>\n

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These lower mountains have trees that go all the way to the top. The bright green streaks are avalanche chutes, a common sight on all the Rocky Mountains ranges.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The clouds in the sky were starting to build, heading towards thunderstorms predicted for late afternoon and early evening.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Snowy peaks are peeking up over the ridges to the south.<\/p><\/div>\n

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One of many cirques in these mountain ranges, but most of the glaciers have melted.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Above tree line, sheer granite cliffs and remnants of snow from last winter. Waterfalls cascade off of virtually every peak in the parks.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Mountain goats love this country.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Our first glimpse into Banff National Park.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Castle Mountain is aptly named, and we were staying at a rustic cabin fairly close to this mountain.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The sheer cliffs are many hundreds of feet tall. One of the most interesting geologic features for many cliffs in the park is how the strata is bent and folded, or even standing vertical in places. For this particular mountain, most of the strata is horizontal.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Just another closer look at some of the mountain details.<\/p><\/div>\n

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View of the mountain from our cabin window.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Again, these vertical cliffs are each over 100 feet tall. <\/p><\/div>\n

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Heading into the canyon, vibrant green plants enjoy the moisture from the blue water.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The path built into the canyon remains relatively level. There are seven waterfalls along the trail. The first one is only half a mile, and the remaining six are in the next mile.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In places the force of water striking the rocks can be felt in the metal railings.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The sheer canyon walls rise far above the water and far above the trail. The air is cool and moist.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dan was looking down.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The water cools the air in the canyon. The stone walls are at least 100 feet straight up over the water.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A hard rock in the middle of the waterway may become a new waterfall of it's own someday.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The old trail, replaced by steel. This old path would have been extremely treacherous during any sort of thunderstorm, slick and steep with no guardrails.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The water color is created by dissolved rock from the glacial history of the region.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The water undercutting hard granite, eventually the wall will collapse and a new chapter in the creek will begin.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dan pointed this out to me and asked me why I was writing on stone walls. I'm innocent, I tell ya'!<\/p><\/div>\n

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A Gold Mantle Squirrel, watching the tourist go by.<\/p><\/div>\n

The next day we took a drive from Banff to Drumheller to visit another favorite place, the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology.\u00a0 Driving through Calgary that morning was an adventure.\u00a0 There was a torrential downpour, so much water that seeing a half a block ahead was almost impossible.\u00a0 So much water was on the roadway, halfway submerging tires on vehicles in some stretches.\u00a0 When they drove past us, they would throw up a wall of water, and zero visibility resulted.\u00a0 It made for a very long drive.\u00a0 Coming back again in the afternoon, the skies were only partly cloudy, and the drive was much less stressful.\u00a0 That museum is absolutely fantastic, 100,000 square feet of dinosaurs.\u00a0 It is a World Heritage site.\u00a0 They always have something new going on.\u00a0 The Triceratops is my favorite, it’s beautiful and amazing.<\/p>\n

After we got home from our little trip, we went for a walk by our own river and located a woodpecker nest.\u00a0 The babies pretty much yelled constantly for food, and their parents were constantly coming back to the nest with a fat juicy bug to stuff into whoever was yelling the loudest.\u00a0 The noise was pretty amazing.<\/p>\n

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A Lewis Woodpecker nest, full of baby birds at the time this picture was taken. They are all out now raising hell around the river corridor. They are absolutely beautiful birds and complete lunatics.<\/p><\/div>\n

A few weeks ago, we were heading out to the garage to go somewhere, and I caught a movement in the fence near the garage.\u00a0 It was the baby fawn we had seen hiding in the bushes in front of the sunroom.\u00a0 He had tried to go through the fence and had gotten his back legs well and truly tangled.\u00a0 Just a week before he had fit through with no problems, but this week, no go.<\/p>\n

We walked up to see if we could untangle him, and he was positive we were going to eat him.\u00a0 He was screaming loudly (poor little thing), and trying to jump around, so we restrained him, and I managed to get his legs back out of the fence but he was still stuck.\u00a0 Dan left me holding the fawn and went to the garage to get wire cutters.\u00a0 His mother was snorting with alarm on the driveway above the fence, also sure I was planning to eat her baby.\u00a0 That was when I discovered that a baby fawn’s head was harder than my lip, when he jumped up and smacked me in my mouth.<\/p>\n

Dan returned with wire cutters, and moments later the fawn was free!\u00a0 He scampered off to rejoin his mother, and we didn’t see either one of them again for over a week.\u00a0 No doubt she wanted to stay away from the scary monsters.\u00a0 Evidently they’ve both forgotten the trauma, because they are back, and he’s growing like a weed.\u00a0 He was bouncing in the yard a couple of days ago, taking time out between bounces to munch on lilac leaves next to our bedroom windows, then more bouncing, and then marveling at the sidewalk.\u00a0 He’s very cute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Banff National Park is our most favorite place of all time, and we got to visit there for a few days last week.\u00a0 It’s been at least six years since we were last there, and we were curious if the scenery would still blow us away as much as it had in the past.\u00a0 Yep, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2472"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2499,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472\/revisions\/2499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}