After two days of pretty much solid rain, I woke up this morning to sunshine, lollypops and rainbows… well one out of three ain’t bad when you’ve had a run of none out of three. Blue skies ahoy at Patricia Lake.
We have only a four hour drive to get to Wells Grey Provincial Park today which is our next stop and quite a long time to do it in as we gain an hour back going from Mountain Time back to Pacific Time! Yep, crossed a line coming down a hill and got an hour back, yay. So, we had time to go back out to the allegedly picturesque but previously covered in cloud, Maligne region to check out the Maligne River, the Maligne Canyon and the famous Lake Maligne.
With Aunty Mary behind the wheel, and me armed with my trusty EOS, we head off towards Lake Maligne. En route we saw yet another avalanche warning sign… I said to my erstwhile travel companion, ‘I don’t believe any of the signs around here, they never tell you where things are, they never tell you how far away places are and they constantly warn you of bears and avalanches but I’ve not seen a single one of either! The signs… they lie!’ Even as I spoke, I was secretly hoping that mocking the bear warning signs would trigger a confluence of universe mocking me back and throwing bears in our faces as we had been in the Rockies now for ten whole days and the wildlife was a bit thin on the ground. We had seen only a handful of chipmunks and squirrels, and one lonely, but huge, elk…
And what do you know? A few miles down the road we see some fellow travellers out of their cars and photographing something in a slight culvert… having seen this phenomena before we pulled over too, to see what had piqued their interest. ‘Lo and behold, they were out of their car and photographing a little black bear, and by ‘little’ I mean about the size of a large wooly sheep. So probably a juvenile, which meant I was standing on the side of the road taking photos of this very obliging and oblivious bear keeping a sharp eye out in every direction in case there was a mother bear around somewhere. :S But way cute! He was eating fresh green foliage that was growing by the side of the road and cared not a whit for the attention he was getting. I can’t tell you how excited we were. That just made my day. 🙂 He was only little but I thought he was gorgeous and I could totally see why, the world over, stuffed toys for children often take on the shape of bears.
We watched him for a while and continued down the road only to see yet another black bear on the side of the road… this one was a little bigger but equally unconcerned by our presence. A few more happy snaps of the beautiful black bear enjoying his breakfast were captured and grinning like kids we set off again, thinking if this kept up we will never get to the lake.
And it did… only the next time we saw some travellers stopping to see wildlife on the side of the road they were very carefully and quietly watching a very large woodland caribou. Now he was about the size of a horse, and was also quietly grazing on the side of the road when we came upon him. Several other people turned up and every car door opening and closing was making him skittish. Next thing you know, he was turning in our direction and made for the road, scattered the onlookers for the relative safety of their cars. I watched him as he crossed the road and then stood looking at us, stamping his feet, throwing his head around and seemingly posturing. We got a few more photos of this large animal and then also got back in the car and ventured onwards towards the lake.
A very eventful morning and we had not yet reached out destination! Three squirrels, two bears and one caribou 🙂 Awesome sauce!
We arrived out at Lake Maligne and it was peaceful and quiet, the tourist boats had not started up for the day yet and the lake was beautiful with a patchy blue sky overhead reflected in the waters.
After a short wander around the lake, we came back and did the short Maligne Canyon walk which is home to some absolutely stunning rock formations and waterfalls. I took a whole pile of pictures here of the turbulent waters that had carved this enormous canyon out of the rocks beneath us. So much water, the roar was deafening.
By now we had used up all our time and thought we had better head back to the highway and hit the road, Jack. Only Jasper had one more surprise up her sleeve for us on the way back out the same Maligne Lake Road – another bear. Only this time, a much larger brownish/black bear. I am not sure how many photos I took of that bear, I only know that he was surrounded by about 15 photographers by the time I left and they were snapping away with their huge cameras set to motordrive, so the bear was probably more photographed than the lake this morning!
It was only after this already busy morning that we decided to go grab some paninis for lunch from Tim Hortons and then set the GPS for today’s destination, Wells Grey National Park. 🙂
