Long drive back from Wells Grey Provincial Park to Vancouver! The highways here are mostly in really good condition though compared to some of the disaster zones we call highways back home. So upside, nice smooth comfy drive… downside, no one seems to be doing the speed limit! Apparently there’s no speed cameras here so if you’re in a 100kph zone, the ‘slow’ lane (right most lane) will be going 110kph and the ‘fast’ lane (left overtaking lane) will be 120kph or more. So it feels like you have to keep your foot to the floor to keep up or you’re going to get blown away. Not that I have a problem with driving over the limit, but loads of people doing 20 over? That just a little weird, even the campervans and RVs that are everywhere are hooning around at 110kph plus. 🙂

Anyway, we arrived safely back in Vancouver after an uneventful drive… very uneventful for Aunty Mary who couldn’t tell you much about it at all seeing as how she slept through most of it! We went for a scurry down the street to grab a few touristy trinkets for the kids and I managed to get my nails done (how lovely to be able to do that – I remember hunting for a manicurist in Turkey everywhere in 2007 and coming up empty in every town we went to!). Picked up some things for The Small Child for when he comes over in July and a few things for the cruise.

Then it was off to see ‘Twelfth Night’ at the annual Bard On The Beach Festival. Each year the Bards On the Beach society, which is largely a volunteer organization, runs a series of Shakespeare plays in a park down near Granville Island… this year they are doing ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘Measure for Measure’ and ‘Elizabeth Rex’ over the course of the summer. We weren’t quite sure what to expect other than a play being held in a tent.

When we arrived however, it became apparent that Vancouver has been hosting these events for 24 years (big anniversary events planned for next year) and it is a highlight of the arts and cultural calendar every year. They have an enormous tent complex set up with bars, refreshments, a gift shoppe 😉 and the actual theatre, the backdrop for which is the mountains out the back of the tent!

I have seen Twelfth Night twice before and watched it numerous times on DVD – it’s one of my favourite plays, but I must admit, the performance we saw here in Vancouver has become my favourite. The artistic director (whose name escapes me) had an amazing vision to set the play in a 19th hotel/spa… so think men in boaters and striped and tweed suits, and ladies in corseted highwaisted dresses and absurd swimming trunks etc. It was very creative and just worked so well.
The stage itself and the mountains in the backdrop become a character in the play as they become so integral to the action. The actors were amazing too… Viola was so well portrayed and the young actress playing her was wonderful. Malvolio, who was always one of my favourite Shakespearean characters, was played so well I don’t think I will ever see the likes of it again. He was fantastic… equal parts boorish, amusing and pathetic. Just great. Even Olivia who, while always being a major part in the play was always to my thinking a bit insipid, was played in such a way as to add greatly to the comedic atmosphere. Very beautiful, very clever and very professional all around. Makes me wish I was going to be here to see the rest of the season!

Had an easy drive through the mountains, stopping very briefly to take a pic of Mt Robson en route on our way to Wells Grey this afternoon. Such beautiful scenery on either side of us and thankfully only one or two chicken fucking morons on the highway.

We also encountered, and seemed to travel with for quite some time, a very large group of Harley enthusiasts on our travels, which had a strange way of keeping the traffic around them well behaved. Maybe my fellow motorists had also seen one too many episodes of Sons of Anarchy too, but it seems people are very reluctant to over take bikies in full leathers and patches when they are with thirty mates! We arrived in Clearwater, the small town at the base of the park, and stopped to pick up some supplies (only White this time, still had some Red left)… saw this very err, interesting sign that I just HAD to stop and take a photo of:

Makes me wonder if it’s one of those places people send their potentially homosexual children to have the ‘gay prayed outta them’. 😛 Yeah, I watch too many movies. First thing we did was pop into the Information Centre to collect some info on what is to see on the park as the Lonely Planet was proving as useless as tits on a bull for this one… perhaps because of it’s inaccessibility – this is one park you definitely don’t want to hike or backpack into, it is about 70km of roads in before you even hit any of the plethora of hiking trails.

We decided to make our way to our accommodation, Helmcken Falls Lodge but first thought we would stop at some of the lookouts and one of the waterfalls which was on the way. We stopped first at a lookout, that gave a sweeping panoramic view down the entire Clearwater Canyon, which was just off the side of the road and was quite unexpected. We found ourselves parked at the top of a huge precipice looking down into an enormous valley, that had a river running through it. Really quite a spectacular spot.

After that we went for a short walk to see the awkwardly named, Spahat Falls. As soon as we left the car park area, I could hear the water rushing somewhere in the near distance, but nothing could prepare us for the sight we were about to encounter a mere five minute walk from the car… a waterfall of unknown height but certainly significant grandeur, was right in front of us. I quite literally was unable to capture it – unable to give the falls any scale and they lost all their impact and enormity, thanks to the itty bitty viewing screen of my camera! I haven’t seen a waterfall like this in years, perhaps since I was a kid up in The Territory. Huge volcanic red strata rock walls lined each side of the canyon, and the water spilling out of a crevice in the rock, was dropping an easy 180-200 feet onto massive boulders below, sending up large billows of mist into the air swirling at the bottom of the falls. Absolutely amazing. Such an unexpectedly beautiful sight so soon after our arrival here… and apparently not even the largest or most spectacular of the falls in Wells Grey.

As the afternoon was getting on and it had been a really, really long day – literally THE longest day of the year, seeing how it was the 21st of June 😛 , and we gained an extra hour as we came down from Mountain Time to Pacific Time and I’d been up since 0530. We went and checked into our room at the Helmcken Falls Lodge (Helmcken… another odd word, between this and the Spahat, it makes me feel like people round here don’t know how to spell!), and found much to my delight… more hummingbirds! 😀 They have some feeders up on the verandah where the restaurant is, so we had dinner of some very yummy mushroom soup and sat behind a mesh screen watching the hummingbirds buzz around us barely a couple of feet away while we ate.

Now, we were going to call it a day, as we had been out doing most of Jasper and Lake Maligne that morning but… down in the reception there was a sign up that predicted foul weather was afoot for tomorrow, and that was enough to spur us onto go back out after dinner. I am loving the long twilights, it gives you plenty of opportunity to go see things well up until 10pm compared to summer at home where it’s pitch dark by 7:30pm – 8pm (curse our lack of day light saving!). We head off to the next nearest water falls, which are thankfully slightly easier to pronounce and spell – Dawsons Falls 🙂 It was only a short walk down to the viewing areas to see the falls, but alas… we had forgotten about the damn mozzies, and left the insect repellent back at the cabin, so it was a powerwalk to keep ahead of the little buggers out to the falls. There are two viewing areas over Dawsons Falls one from the bottom where you can see how wide and high they are, and one at the top where you can get a feel for the huge volume of water that is tumbling over this terrain.

It was moving unbelievably fast! And there was just so much water. Watching the torrent of water moving so fast, and the mist rise from it as it crashed over the rocks at the bottom in the rapidly setting sun was really beautiful. Made me want to throw something in to see how fast it would be swept away. 🙂 Next we took a drive a little further into the park to see Helmcken Falls while the light quality was still great for taking photos. Another quick sprint into the viewing areas to keep ahead of the mosquitos and we were greeted by yet another spectacular waterfall. This one is apparently the highest in the park at, 452 feet. I am certain my photos don’t do it justice, it was magnificent. The falls cut through a unique landscape that was formed first by volcanic movement and enormous lava holes, that was then apparently calved through by glaciers and is now being eroded by the waterways leaving a huge bowl like structure where these falls pass now.

There is a walk that goes around the rim that you can see in this picture that we are considering doing tomorrow if the weather manages to triumph over the predictions, but we shall have to wait and see. After taking way too many photos of the Helmcken (yeah, still a stupid word) waterfall, it was starting to get dark, so we flipped a coin and decided to drive up to the highest point in the park and check out the Green Tower Hill Lookout. The road up was really windy and narrow and I was very glad we were the only ones out and about so late. Then suddenly the road narrowed even further, changed to be an unsealed surface full of bumps and rocks and started to double back on itself in tight hairpin turns. Far out I was hoping there was no one coming the other way! It was really dark forest we were going through when we popped out the top and into a huge clearing with a tall viewing platform. You could see the mountain ranges around the canyon in a 360 degree view. Absolutely stunning.

But we could also see tomorrows weather rolling in and were suddenly very glad we had decided to take this after dinner jaunt.

Looks like we will get to try and have a sleep in tomorrow morning cos the rains a coming!

To be continued…

As predicted we woke up to a very rainy miserable day, feeling very smug for having hit the highlights of Wells Grey last night. Pottered around and had a leisurely breakfast over looking the grounds of the lodge where out cabin is and watched as the weather lifted somewhat towards mid morning. Decided to divide and conquer today and Aunty Mary went off to do the Mineral Springs Walk from Ray’s Farm near Alice Creek, while I went off in search of Bailey’s Chute – an area of the Clearwater River with pretty fierce rapids that the chinook salmon traverse every fall when they come over 600kms inland to spawn.

In August and September the area attracts a lot of bears, osprey and eagles as they find the exhausted salmon easy pickings in this part of the river. Today we saw two more black/brown bears eating and ambling beside the road. They were in a lot of dense underbrush so you could hardly see these guys compared to yesterday’s bears so did not quite go to town the way I did yesterday with the photos. 🙂

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. 🙂

Well, while I have been sitting here safely in Jasper complaining about the rain interfering with our touristy sightseeing, the area we have just come from (Banff, Canmore, HighRiver, and other areas in southern Alberta are literally underwater. They have had over 100mm (some areas reporting 200mm) in the last 36 hours which is causing massive flash flooding. Over six different communities have been evacuated moving approximately 7000 people out of their homes.

In Canmore, the sleepy little town we visited on Tuesday (it’s now Thursday evening) is being completely evacuated and houses along Cougar Creek are subsiding into raging waters! The news reports are full of footage of houses, fences washed away, cars left abandoned with water up to their windscreens (and you know how big their trucks are around here!) and shop fronts blocked off with sandbags as residents attempt to keep out the flood waters. There’s a gas line burst underwater in HighRiver that can’t be accessed to be repaired as it is under torrential floodwaters so it is leaking ‘sour gas’ (whatever that is) into the nearby area. Sections of the Trans Canada Highway are cracked up and have eroded in less than a day and two people are missing after their trailer washed away. 🙁

It seems the problem primarily stems from the waterways, rivers and streams being already full from the regular spring snow and ice melts, so when a huge unanticipated storm cell moves across the area at this time of year, it can cause this kind of phenomenal flooding. And as if things need to get any worse, they are expecting another 100mm+ over the next 24hrs, which could see even more areas affected by the flooding. The entire area around Calgary has been declared a state of emergency area and helicopters are evacuating people to higher ground.

It’s so bizarre watching these floods ripping through areas and destroying shops and homes, bridges and roadways, that we were travelling through just a couple of days ago. :S

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/calgary-communities-evacuated-as-flooding-prompts-state-of-emergency-1.1333791

Update: It’s getting worse. Over 12,000 people evacuated people trapped all over the place, people being lifed off their houses in escavator buckets, roads are washed out, severe mudslides destroying property, cars washed off roads into culverts, whole houses being washed away entirely in plaecs like Bragg Creek and then smashing into bridges and road overpasses. The military have been called in to help move people out and rescue those that are trapped by the fast rising waters. Many people barely manging to escape with their lives and their pets and unfortunately no sign of relief from the weather over the next few days, so it’s only going to get worse. Canmore seems to be right in the thick of it and all residents evacuated earlier, but now they are evacuating people from Calgary too which very rarely has mandatory evacuation orders out in place. Everyone out to higher ground for the next 72 hours. 🙁 There seems to be a lot of damage, a lot of panic and a lot of loss. I don’t know any of these people, but I can’t imagine what they are going through this whole thing has occured so suddenly and violently!

Update: Things in Canmore and Calgary in southern Alberta have continued to turn even uglier. Overnight more than 100,000 residents have been evacuated from their homes and flood waters continue to rise and three people are believed to have lost their lives. Over 500 members of the Canadian Military have been dispatched to assist with rescue efforts as people find themselves cut off by rapidly rising flash flooding and severely over capacity waterways, land and mudslides and torrential rain. 🙁 I heard on the news this morning that the Calgary Zoo was being evacuated. How on earth do you evacuate an entire zoo…?

Update: We are back in Vancouver now and people everywhere are asking us all about the floods whenever they hear we have just come back from the east. People are shocked and alarmed about the suddenness of it all… so even though they do get flooding out on the prairies about every ten years, it seems this year the floods are much worse than usual. Fairly quickly in the conversation, the fact that the Calgary ice hockey arena was flooded, and that up to the first eight rows of seating ended up underwater, swiftly followed by reassurances that the stadium will be cleaned up and repaired in time for the season start in October, and equally swift commentary that it doesn’t really matter because ‘their team sucks anyway, eh’.

Another wet day in Jasper… but it’s nothing compared to what is going on further south in Alberta, where we were touring around just two days ago! They have a state of emergency declared around Calgary through to Canmore due to a huge storm cell that dumped a pile of hail on them and is causing flash flooding. Banff is caught up in the middle of it too. :S Horrible thing to happen to any towns, but is it wrong that I’m sitting here feeling relieved to be 250kms north of the whole mess and to have missed it by a couple of days?

Anyway, we were going out to Lake Maligne today but the rain has kinda put the kybosh on that plan somewhat. Instead we ended up at the Yellowhead History Museum and Archive here in beautiful downtown Jasper. Btw, did you know that Jasper the township is right in the middle of Jasper National Park and if you come in here – even if you have no intentions of going hiking or checking out anything in the park proper, you need to have a National Park Pass for the duration? We didn’t. And even though we were planning on doing heaps of activities in the National Parks anyway, and have bought multi-day passes, it would have been good information for hotels and accommodation centres to let you know don’tcha think? Oh well.

We went to the little museum and read up on the natural history of the area, the formation of the glaciers and a whole lot of information on the original European pioneers in this area. Most of them were engaged in the fur trade, but many Europeans were drawn to Canada in the late 1800s in search of unique flora and fauna. And of course the environs attracted cartographers and many of the first pioneers were keen to be the first to climb the biggest mountains they could find up here… and promptly name said mountains after themselves! 😀 Which is why all the mountains have names like Robson, Douglas, Patterson etc… not too many Native American names sitting on the maps.

The museum also held a lot of interesting artefact, well interesting if you were born and raised in Australia and you’ve never seen a bear trap, an old set of snow shoes and things like buffalo coats and hand embroidered or beaded buckskin or moose hide!

Strangely enough the museum was also having a display on Marilyn Monroe (of all people!) because she apparently filmed a movie up here with Robert Mitchum called ‘River of No Return’ (nope, I haven’t seen it) but there are lots of little anecdotes written by locals who remember her being here and lots of gorgeous movie stills of her in the Rockies doing stuff from the film. It was pretty interesting.

Hopefully the weather will clear up and we will get out to Lake Maligne for a look in the morning with gorgeous summer blue skies… but we won’t complain about the weather because the rest of poor Alberta is really copping it. There are whole towns being evacuated, houses and roadways swept away, two people missing presumed drowned, cars all underwater, loads of people cut off from their homes and workplaces and the footage on the TV is just alarming! Reminds me of the flash flooding imagery that came from Toowoomba in 2011. 🙁