And that was the hardest part of my day today really… sitting in the sun deciding if it was leaves rustling above me or a distant river that I could hear. 😛 We have been exploring Revelstoke National Park today – going on a few nature walks, checking out lots of strange plants and flowers, admiring the freezing cold glacial river that runs through the area, and driving to gorgeous mountain look outs.
We went on a walk through a Giant Cedar Forest which was only a short walk but had some of the most enormous red cedars. Standing at the base of these huge 500 year old trees, you could lean right back and look up but never see the top of them. They are about 20 foot around the base and solid as a rock, but where people had been touching their bark, they were rubbed to a deep reddish-orangey brown colour, very vibrant and very much alive.
Some of the trees in the forest had come down due to the weight of snow on their branches or unusual rainfall levels destabilizing their roots and these massive trunks were laying beside the walking paths covered in moss and fungi in amongst the ferny undergrowth. Whole thing was very green and very beautiful, rather cold and rather special. Every now and then a gap would part between the trees and you could see the snow capped peaks of the mountains in the distance… absolutely gorgeous. (I’m going to run out of superlatives on this trip, I can tell already).
After the cedar forest we went to a board nature walk over some swamp or marshland called, of all things – Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk. On the way there I had no idea what to expect of a placed Skunk Cabbage Anything but it turns out the skunk cabbage is a rather unique plant that grows near the glacial rivers here that does indeed look like cabbage leaves – if a single cabbage leave was about 75-100cm long! These things were huge but they looked like cabbage leaves. Don’t know about the skunk bit, didn’t wanna try the old scratch and sniff trick!
Anyway the boardwalk meanders through the swamp keeping your feet politely dry and above water level allowing you to get in amongst the reeds, and crazy arse plants and see if you can find any of teeny tiny migratory birds that they track from here – crazy little fuckers come up to this specific spot every summer and spend the winters down in Central and South America EVERY year. For a bird that is about the size of a finch and weighs about 60gms, that’s some crazy arse shit right there… mind you I can totally understand the desire to get out of here in the winter – it’s early summer here at the moment and I’m in long sleeves.
Decided to drive up Revelstoke Mountain for lunch as far as they would let us go anyway, as the road wasn’t totally cleared due to the snow line still being down quite low. Had a great lunch of TIm Hortons bagels with cream cheese which is going to become a bit of a habit I think… it’s a very easy packed lunch to take anywhere with you, sun dried tomato and herb bagels with a little triangle of cream cheese and a plastic knife and we were all set. Stopped about half way up the mountain and found a picnic table to have lunch at and just watched the view while munching on some bagels and wondering what everyone at home is doing right now (at that time probably you lot would have been all sleeping, but I was thinking of you and you know, they say it’s the thought that counts!)
Then it was off to brave the supermarket to pick up some supplies for dinner. Saw some of the craziest stuff on the shelves of the grocery store – minced salmon? frozen meals that all came with a brownie? oreo pudding? frozen guacamole? chocolate cream cheese? pizza crust in a tube (like cookie dough)? All sorts of weird shit that didn’t look edible too. Oh, and steaks the size of dinner plates – two for $10! Needless to say we played it pretty safe with the food shopping and no monster steaks.
Must be time to go off to the hot springs again… this travel stuff is hard.