Cold and knackered...

...well we were a couple of days ago anyway.

We left Jasper feeling pretty good, but by the time we were finished in Lake Louise we were in desperate need of sleep and warmth!  So how come?  Well sleeping in a tent at sub-zero temperatures is officially rubbish.  We had 3 nights in the tent and it was literally freezing - ice on the cars the next morning as it was that cold.  We had layers of clothing on, blanket, airbed, sleeping bags and were still cold!  If the cold wasn't enough the train kept running all night (tracks were next to the campsite) and honking its horn all hours!  We had enough of that so we moved onto Radium Hot Springs, booked into some warm and quiet accommodation and have appreciated some of the finer things in life - like sleep!

We had some really long days after getting up bright and early for not one, but two sunrises whilst in Lake Louise (all Rob's choice you understand).  In between we've been on a few walks, with the biggest being to the Big Beehive - this probably won't mean anything to you guys, but basically it was an 11km all-day hike which was really steep and our muscles really felt it the following day. The hike was worth it though, amazing views when we finally got to the top.

Rob also turned all Swampy eco-warrior on us and had a go at a load of Asian tourists that thought it was funny to be feeding the wildlife.  Soon put them right!

Today we are heading off from Radium Hot Springs towards Banff where Rob will be after a first - getting his hair cut abroad - woot, exciting!  As Banff is absolutely rammed with people this time of year I don't think we'll be sticking around there for long and by the weekend we are planning to be USA bound once again, heading in the direction of Yellowstone National Park.

Until the next installment...

Ahhhhh......this is the life!

So, we're now back in one of our favourite spots in Canada - Jasper National Park.

Jasper is having a mini heatwave at the moment so the shorts are on and our lily white legs are out! We're experiencing highs of around 30 degrees, similar to what you're having back home as we understand. The difference here in the mountains is that it drops to around 2 degrees at night so, it's good for sleeping.

Have had some really loud but interesting thunder storms over the last couple of days - sun is out it's nice and hot, it thunders and then hails - really changeable weather.

After the thunder & lightening!

So what have we been up to....  more of the same to be honest.  Lots of walking, exploring, getting bitten (by insects) to within an inch of our lives, seeing new things, more wildlife and oh, taking the rental car to the garage for an oil change and doing the laundry, just to break up the fun!

Us at Peyto Lake

Maligne Canyon

Waterton Lake

At the moment we're taking things quite leisurely so we can recharge our batteries in readiness for our massive hike at Lake Louise in a few days.  Rob is making me walk about 8 miles with an elevation gain of around 2000 feet.  I will need oxygen!  Should be good though.

Rob's new driving position!

We're spending about another week in the Canadian Rockies and then we'll drive back into the states to start our 3 month driving tour... Wonder what that will bring?!?!

We've been away now for 37 days, I miss some of my home comforts (but we'll get those back in a few months), people and Henry cat, who by the way is having a fab time without us.  He has already been filmed by Channel 5 to hopefully appear in one of their pet programmes after Christmas - what a little star *, can't wait to see that!

By the way, Rob's added some other links on the right hand side of the blog, some geeky things like the routes we have taken.

North America Road Trip - A small bit of Alaska...

After driving hundreds and hundreds of miles, we ended up in a small one-horse town in Alaska called Hyder, and to be honest, it looks like the horse left years ago.  This is the sprawling urban metropolis we were welcomed by!

Hyder town - not much there!

That pretty much set the tone for the whole place really - it was sleepy/comatose, with hardly anything there and nothing really open.  After trawling the internet, there are a massive 3 tourist attractions in the whole area and yep, we did them all.  On the plus side (especially for Lisa), the tent was avoided (again!) due to high bear activity, so we managed to get 3 nights accommodation in a real room.

The main reason for the trip was to go to a viewing area to see wildlife.  On this count it was very good.  In between the sessions of sitting around with nothing happening, we managed to see loads of grizzly bears, a few black bears, a couple of wolves and some bald eagles.  It did make for some long days though - 5:30am starts to catch the wolves and often later in the day to see the grizzlies.  It was good, but we could have got a bit bored if we had hung around Hyder for any longer.

Grizz going for a swim

Got one!

On one of the days, we headed up to the massive Salmon Glacier (tourist attaction #2) and it was worth driving the very bumpy road as it was quite spectacular.  At the top we spoke to this interesting guy known as "The Bear Man" who was selling books, DVDs and other stuff, he basically lives a a recluse for 3 to 4 months during the summer up there, sleeping in a tent and going for wilderness walks (don't think he has a wash either as there was no water, no wonder there were so many flies hanging around!).  Sounds a bit weird, but each to their own.

This part of our trip gave us a few firsts - some welcome, some less so.  We got to see wolves and bald eagles up close which was great, plus we spoke to some interesting people along the way.  Some unwelcome firsts - on the drive in we unfortunately spotted a dead black bear lying on the side of the road - obviously this happens more often than you would like to imagine, but not pleasant to see.  Lisa also had an "interesting" time performing an emergency stop on the main highway when a bear ran across the road right in front of us.  Lisa = traumatised, bear absolutely fine and legged it.

All in all we've had a good, if brief, trip into Alaska.  Hopefully we'll go back to see other parts of it in the future, but for now more of Canada and the Rockies are on the cards...

North America Road Trip - Happy Birthday to me!

Admittedly it was a few days ago now, but it was Rob's birthday on Monday.  Thanks to everyone for the texts, emails and happy birthday messages.

Surely on your birthday it would be nice to have a relaxing time, have a bit of luxury and just chill out for the day (after all, Rob's not getting any younger)?!?!  Nope, Rob decided that it would a good idea to go and have a look at a sunrise over Wild Goose Island. So there we are at stupid o'clock (5am!) crawling out of my favourite type of accommodation (you guessed it, a tent) to go and stand by lake to wait for the sun to do it's thing.  Then again, it's better than getting out of bed to go to work on your birthday!!

A very cool looking Wild Goose Island

The colours are starting to come through...

After the sun did it's thing we decided that we needed a bit of a birthday treat, so we drove to a nice hotel and treated ourselves to a massive buffet breakfast. We were pigs and ate far too much, it was honestly like we'd been starved for 3 weeks, all because the buffet had food that didn't come from a tin! We then couldn't actually eat anything else for the rest of that day - stuffed!

Feed me!

Mmm, nearly finished...

It was then time to cross the border (by car) into our favourite country, Canada.  As it turned out, it was really easy and didn't take very long.  No inspections of the car like we were expecting - we could have had anything in the boot!

So off we went to Waterton Lakes National Park where we spent the afternoon generally exploring and chatting with the rangers.  

A bit later on that day we spotted a bull moose in the marshes, a lot of people gathered and the rangers appeared to take control of the situation.  The nice ranger man happened to say "wouldn't it be funny if a bear crept up behind us whilst we're all watching the moose" .... within 5 minutes, it was like he heard us, a black bear appeared behind the crowd, it gave the rangers a bit of a challenge especially when the bear started running!  We didn't make this up - honest.

Rob's birthday treat was a night in proper accommodation - I booked it as a surprise, but really the treat was for me as I thought I might need a proper wash after being away from home for 3 weeks!! (joke!).  Ahhh, proper room = 1 happy Lisa!  Rob did enjoy the
room much more than the tent but he'll never admit it!

So where are we now.... we are well and truly in the heart of Canada and it has to be said, we feel very much at home.  We left Waterton Lakes after climbing one of the mountains (well for an unfit Lisa it felt like a mountain) to get a view over the townsite, we also had a chat with another roadside bear on the way.

We've stopped at Radium Hot Springs and are now in a one horse town called McBride, nothing really here except an Inn, some industrial units and tumbleweed!  Tomorrow we continue more of our drive to Hyder in Alaska and we will get to our destination on Saturday. We're hoping to see more grizzly bears this time fishing for salmon.  Rob's making me camp again when we get to Hyder and I am a bit scared that a big ole grizzly will want to share my sleeping bag.  It will be a bit chillier than the 30 degrees we've been experiencing lately.

Well that's about it for now, the weird thing is it seems longer than 4 weeks ago since we left home to start our adventure.  Maybe it's because we've done so much already? It does feel like we've been away for much longer and we still have 11 months to holiday!

North America Road Trip - Glacier and beyond...

Welcome back to our blog.  We've been removed from most aspects of civilisation (toilets without electricity and running water, a bed, the Internet etc.) for the last week or so and frankly we are both looking forward to a comfy bed and some creature comforts for a bit (well one night before the dreaded tent is used again).

What have we been up to?  We've been having lots of fun looking at loads of stuff, eating things out of tins and sleeping uncomfortably (most of the time).

Last time we checked in we were heading into Glacier National Park.  Well we've done that now and have some mixed opinions.  The southern end of the park was OK, but nothing more than that really - nice enough to look at, but nothing really amazing to see - frankly have seen better.  The further we drove up through the park, it got much more interesting - the scenery was more dramatic, the roads were more gnarly and there were more animals to see.

Seattle Space Needle (no, this isn't in the national park!) 

A mountain goat!

A creek in Glacier

Swiftcurrent lake

Like at home, it is peak season over here with it being the school holidays and therefore it has been mad busy - there were people everywhere with quite a few of them being really annoying (as Americans often can be!).  If we've heard one American gush about how amazing a piece of moss looks on a rock, we've heard a hundred - they really need a good slap sometimes.  That said, if you go out on some of the walks you can get away from the mental crowds and have a fairly relaxing time.

Yes, that's right, we've been out walking - what's all that about?!?!  Frankly it's been a bit of a shock to the system, but we've managed it, although doing an 8 mile hike in baking heat whilst carting around a load of camera gear wasn't ideal - nice couple of waterfalls at the end of it though :-)

One half of 'Twin Falls' waterfall

We got pretty lucky with the weather - only 1 bad night when a storm hit, other than that we've been stuck in the middle of a mini heatwave (30 degrees C most days).  Far too hot for Lisa, but good for the David Dickinson tan!

Us at Wild Goose Island in Glacier

Us at Hidden Lake overlook

As for camping in the National Parks in the US, well it was certainly an experience.  The campsites are pretty basic, but have just about enough to get by - assuming you can put up with your own 'musk' for a day or two!  With each pitch you get a spot for your tent & car, plus your own fire pit and picnic bench - all sounds quite civilised so far.  However on the more primitive sites, you don't get toilets that have any soap or running water, and electricity is also a no-no.  Going for a dump by torchlight is an "interesting" experience...  To keep clean there are some showers at a couple of the sites and to be fair they were pretty good, so can't complain about those really.  Lisa still hates it!

Lisa feeling great after a night in a tent!

Burning food - awesome

Part way through, laziness kicked in and for a couple of nights, we frankly couldn't be bothered to set-up a tent, so we went for the sleeping in the car option.  BAD IDEA. Incredibly, sleeping in a tent turned out to be way more comfortable.  Admittedly having eating, sleeping and home office facilities all within arms reach was a bonus, but having next to no sleep was a shabby trade-off.

We do think that one night around midnight, whilst we were in the tent, a bear wandered somewhere nearby.  Can't be sure as we only heard the cracking of twigs under foot, but to be honest, neither of us was planning on popping our heads out to double check and potentially have our necks cracked like twigs...

As for animal spotting - well we've done pretty well so far.  We have seen plenty of bears (mainly from a distance), but at no stage have we felt the need to use the Skinner technique and get naked (long story, maybe for another time)!

Our current wildlife count:

• Grizzly bears - 2
• Black bears (including some cubs) - 11
• Moose (bull) - 1
• Mountain goats - loads
• Marmots - 4
• Squirrels - millions!

One of the bears we watched seemed a bit too comfortable with all of the people watching and wasn't bothered at all.  One of the park rangers tried to scare him off using a firecracker round from a gun - didn't work.  He then got us all to shout and make loads of noise - didn't work.  The bear left when he wanted to.  Quite entertaining for us, but maybe not such good news for the bear in years to come...