Today has been a day of flexibility and plans changed and changed and changed again thanks to the vagaries of weather! It started out a glorious day with the sun shining, the skies blue, the humming birds flitting about at breakfast … just beautiful.
Went for a drive to Glacier National Park with the intention of going to the Great Glacier Walk for Mum and a wander down to Bear Falls for me – there’s so much to do here, a divide and conquer approach seemed sensible. Anyway, we get to the visitor’s centre and find out the Great Glacier walk is closed due to snow… still. So we decide to go to do the Bear Falls walk together. Get to the jumping off point for that walk and I take one look at the straight down path and weigh up the probability of pain and nausea and go ‘nup!’ Mum, who doesn’t have my clicky neck decides to give it a whirl while I decide to catch up on some correspondence in the warmth of the car for bit. And thank fuck I did… about 15 minutes after Mum goes wandering off down, down, down the path to the waterfall it starts to rain. Big fat drops of rain, which preceded squishy but solid hail stones! Weirdest hail storm ever. No green skies, no build up. Just sudden dark clouds and then down it come, enough hail to cover the ground in white and cause me to move our car under a nearby tree. What? Some nice polite snow wasn’t available? :S
I wait feeling vaguely satisfied that I was warm and dry feeling sorry for poor Mum who had gone off to the waterfalls with nothing but a light flannel shirt and a lightweight quasi-waterproof jacket. She eventually comes back up at a half run, not quite dripping wet but with half soaked shoes and camera equipment. She tried too warm up a bit while we waited for a break in the weather and we figured out yet another back up plan for the day. We decide to try the Merging Rivers Walk… supposedly flat enough and short enough that we can scooch back if it starts to piss down, only to find that one too is closed due to snow!!
So now we are up to what? Plan D? We decide to go for a walk at the Rock Gardens instead which is even shorter and more accessible in case we have to dash back followed by hopefully hunting down a picnic table and another walk around the Hemlock Grove. Get down to the Rock Gardens which were fun and, ‘lo and behold… more rain. Make it round the loop without getting too wet, camera gear well protected this time and head for the next port of call, the Hemlock Grove with a view to having some lunch and another walk
Wouldn’t you know it – no huts or picnic spots at all. Dammit. By this time we are getting a bit, ‘hmmmm’. So we decide to head back to our cottage, have our lunch there, get Mum into some warm and dry things and then go down to town to have a poke around (and buy more wine because we is totally out!) and try the Hemlock Grove in the morning because we will have the time.
Get back to the cottage and the weather is glorious again! Who knows. Have lunch, head into town and it’s literally sunny and blue as we walk into the bottle shop and pissing down rain when we come out! Talk about unpredictable. So we potter around town (Revelstoke), which reminds me a LOT of Methven in NZ… quaint buildings, lots of ski and adventure shops, mountains for a backdrop and a very laid back atmosphere. We try not to get too wet and finally end up back here, where I am attempting to photograph the hummingbirds before heading back to the hot springs for our last dip here before we leave tomorrow. 🙂
Better look ahead and check the weather for Banff I think. 😛