Plan B

Well, after finding the Going To The Sun Road closed in Glacier NP, we were kinda stuck on the wrong side of the park. This left us with "Plan B," which was to travel into Canada still on the west side of the Continental Divide, and continue up the Icefield Parkway through Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada.

At this, we made a discovery. The Icefield Parkway in Banff is the most beautiful road in the world.

For the first whole day, we barely took any pictures at all. It seemed pointless, since everything was equally spectacular. Big, rocky mountains and hanging glaciers everywhere, most of them looming right over the road, at most a few miles away. And this continues on both sides of the road more-or-less through the entire park. We spent two days traveling through here and we could easily have spent two weeks. There were endless peaks, rivers and valleys; anything we would have been happy to be out exploring, if we weren't, you know, Going Somewhere.

This was shot at a REST STOP, for crying out loud. As if the planners noticed "Well, a bit of a bad stretch here, scenery-wise. Might as well put the toilet here." This whole road is amazing. We shot this rather tippy photo of ourselves by propping the camera on the truck's not-too-level hood. Note the crappy rest-stop scenery in the background.












There is a very nice bit of scenery here called The Weeping Wall. As far as I know, it's not connected to any religious strife and so is a bit more uplifting than the Wailing variety in Israel. It's a huge mountain which is ringed by a wide plateau, which seems to gather all the snowmelt from the main pinnacle. This all sinks through the rocks and exits the lower wall as little spouting waterfalls from various cracks all over the rock face.

As we were traveling along, we passed a sign warning of Sheep on the road. The sign was the standard yellow diamond, but had flashing amber lights on both sides. "They must really be serious that we might see some sheep up here," we thought. We hadn't seen any yet, so Chris fished out the camera just in case. Literally around the first corner, we come to this fine sight: a huge collection of sheep (all rams, we think) standing in a highway pull-off across the road from the steep cliff wall. Can't imagine why they would choose to hang out there, but it certainly makes them much easier to photograph than trying to find them up on the cliffside. Maybe the amber lights on the sign are triggered by this gentleman's fine neckwear...