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<\/a><\/p>\nLake Louise, one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, and it is one of the most visited placed in Banff National Park.\u00a0 Totally understandable!!\u00a0 Mountains rise straight up from the lake and a glacier hangs over the end of the lake, contributing the rock flour that gives the lake it’s beautiful color.<\/p>\n
We heard a sound echoing off the mountains, and looked towards the glacier.\u00a0 An ice dam had broken, and water was cascading down the sheer cliffs on the bottom edge of the glacier.\u00a0 The water drained away in about 10 minutes, and the sound disappeared.\u00a0 So cool!\u00a0 The power of the water and ice was palpable, giving us chills.<\/p>\n Moraine Lake<\/p>\n Moraine Lake is another jewel located very close to Lake Louise, and it is actually our favorite lake.\u00a0 We hadn’t been there for years, and the water level was about 40 feet lower than the last time we were there.\u00a0 Where I took this picture from, standing on the bank, I would have been well underwater and the picture would have looked substantially different.<\/p>\n Just another view of Moraine Lake, showing how clear the water is and the color which is spectacular.<\/p>\n Jaspar National Park.\u00a0 We took a drive north just sight-seeing.<\/p>\n This is a view from an overlook in Jaspar National Park, looking back south to the road we had just traveled on, heading north to the Columbia Ice Fields, the headwaters for the Columbia River.\u00a0 You can see the road in the bottom of the valley, along the glacier fed river.<\/p>\n The thing about the Canadian Rockies is the mountains are spectacular.\u00a0 Every time you go around a corner on the road, you see yet another breathtakingly beautiful mountain, and then when you turn around and go back the way you came, you see the mountains from a different perspective, and they are just so beautiful it’s really impossible to describe. You have to wonder how you missed that view the first time around.\u00a0 Basically, you just need to go see them for yourself.<\/p>\n Heading east from the mountains, the landscape changes as the mountains disappear in the west.\u00a0 It gets flatter and then you head down into a canyon, going back in geologic time until you arrive at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, 100,000 square feet of dinosaurs.\u00a0 They have thousands and thousands of exhibits on display and they change things every year.\u00a0 Not only do they have fossils from Alberta and Montana, which is directly south of Alberta and in the same geologic formations, they also have visiting exhibits from around the world.\u00a0 It’s a fabulous museum and well deserving of its World Heritage Site designation.<\/p>\n Huge slabs of stone, with partially removed fossils tower over your head.\u00a0 These animals were huge!!<\/p>\n Two of the rock walls.\u00a0 Hard to imagine how they moved these around, much less excavated them from their original locations out in the badlands rock formations where they were found originally.<\/p>\n Some of the fossils are relatively small.\u00a0 These little guys are some of the smaller bird-type fossils, a good 14 feet long from the tip of their noses to the tip of their tails.<\/p>\n One of the Albertosaurus fossils, is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod, during the Late Cretaceous period, 70 million years ago.\u00a0 A T-rex, in other words.<\/p>\n The fossils are displayed in front of some really beautiful artwork depicting what the landscape would have looked like when they were alive.\u00a0 It is hard to actually notice the artwork as the skeletons are completely engrossing to view.<\/p>\n These guys had sails on their backs.\u00a0 I guess it helped them know which way the wind was blowing on any one particular day.<\/p>\n This is one of the frilled ceratopsian dinosaur, a relative of the Triceratops type.\u00a0 These went extinct in the K-T extinction, 68 million years ago, give or take a few millions years.<\/p>\n Not all of the displays are complete as not all fossils have been found to make up a complete animal.\u00a0 This was a large herbivore.\u00a0 See the lack of teeth!<\/p>\n This display showed the evolution of the frilled dinosaurs with horns.\u00a0 This was a type of triceratops.<\/p>\n Relatively small animals, still larger than the largest dogs alive today.\u00a0 It’s really great when they have multiple specimens all on the same display; it really demonstrates the variety in sizes.<\/p>\n A very large turtle.<\/p>\n A large predator and it’s really huge prey.\u00a0 These animals were found together in one of the bone beds.<\/p>\n A small fossil who obviously used his head as a battering ram.\u00a0 The skull is almost solid bone, leaving no room for a brain.<\/p>\n Another view of the Triceratops shows the beautiful skull.<\/p>\n This is the actual hip bones for the T-Rex standing behind it.\u00a0 It is way too heavy to have lifted into the air for the display, so they used a lighter weight cast for the display.<\/p>\n This would be the view looking up as a T-rex was getting ready to snap me up as a small bite-sized snack.\u00a0 I would fit comfortably in his or her mouth, whole.\u00a0 The first time I saw this years ago, I asked Dan, “Wouldn’t it be scary to see this coming for you?!” and he replied, “Not for long!”<\/p>\n They have other more recent animals from the fossil record.<\/p>\n This Sabre Tooth cat looks kind of small, until you imagine several hundred pounds of muscle to go along with the impressive fangs.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>This is my favorite of all the exhibits, a Triceratops found in Montana.\u00a0 It is absolutely beautiful, and really large!!\u00a0 Behind it is another\u00a0 T-Rex, which completely dwarfs the Triceratops.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n