35th Anniversary

Here are just a few of our 35th Anniversary pictures.




Hike to Larch Valley




Hike to Stewart Canyon






At Lake Louise

Taken just before our Ice Walk on the Glacier that you see behind us.




Taken on our last hike at Lake Minnewanka

Scenery on the way to the Glacier Hike

We have way more awesome scenery pictures than we can begin to show you right now.

Elk-Sheep

These Long Horn Sheep were right on the edge of the mountain and on the road.
Norm is quite sad that we haven't seen any Bear yet.

Ice Glacier Hike

We had the awesome experience of hiking on the Ice Glaciers yesterday! It was a bit scary in the beginning. Everyone was much younger than us but we all thought it was an experience of a lifetime. Our guide whose name was Peter was very funny and did a great job leading us along with his dog, George.

Thursday-Canadian Rockies

This morning we messed around at home, got groceries and so on. At noon we started our hike up to Larch Valley. Another rather strenuous 4-5 mile hike, but the scenery and views were amazing. Rapid heart rates going uphill and sore knees and muscles going back down. I don't have todays pictures downloaded yet. We did see some Elk on the way back and also soaked in the Sulphur Hot Springs Pool.

Wednesday

Norm and Wil having fun on the ski slope
We started out our day driving the Bow Valley Parkway to Lake Louise. We went to the Ski Resort and rode the Ski lift up to almost the top & then we hiked to an overlook.

We ended our day at the Radium Hot Springs and got some relief for our sore muscles.

More hiking

Lake Agnes Tea House
9-17-08
We all awoke this morning with more sore body parts than we remembered possible. A lot of moaning and groaning. You might ask if it was worth it. I believe we would all say that it was, even though there were moments during the hike that a few of us wondered if we might survive. We saw such incredible scenery and hiked so incredibly high that we couldn’t hardly believe it ourselves. We stopped often to take pictures but we know that there is no way one can capture what we saw.

We started out our day by driving to Lake Louise, but not sure what we wanted to do. After talking to the Ranger we decided to hike to the Lake Agnes Tea House and to the The Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House. We had thought we would do a short hike since we had done a rather aggressive one on Monday. This hike ended up being a rather strenuous 9 miles. Jan would have enjoyed our Tea times way up high in the mountains.

Canadian Rockie pictures

Hiking Lake Louise
Wil telling Carol how to use her hiking pole ??(this is for Isaiah)
The "World famous" Lake Louise Hotel from across the lake on our hiking trail
On the way to or from the Tea house. Kathy is very tired and not the happiest.

Monday, 9-15-08

Today we made our first visit to Banff National Park. We started at the visitor center in Banff, and asked for hiking information. They were very helpful.
We decide to hike to the top of Sulphur Mountain. The trail is 3.4 miles up and gains about 2,000 ft elevation. It was very beautiful! The trail ends where a gondola ride ends also.
We expected it to be quite cold, but it was excellent hiking weather, around 60 degr. Carol and I both had to take off some layers of clothes soon into the hike.
The elevation gain affected our breathing and heart rates. It was quite strenuous! Wil started us out with a rather aggressive hike for the first day. Pictures to follow, since we don't have internet access where we are staying.
Since we can't use our phones without paying quite a bit, you can either respond to this blog or email us. We hope to get online daily, somehow.

Beginning of our vacation to Canada 9-13 & 14

Saturday afternoon we headed to Chicago while Notre Dame was playing Michigan in down-pouring rain. We arrived at our Hotel without any glitches. We ate dinner at Hooters since that was within walking distance and it was raining. Back in our room which wasn’t top quality but spacious, we nestled under the covers hoping to get a good nights sleep. Our hall was mostly filled with Soccer girls, which were not ready to sleep. They had enough adults along that we thought would keep them under control. 12:45 am was the last time we asked them to please, be quiet. It was like talking in the wind. They were running up and down the halls and yelling to each other. We headed to the airport at 5:00 AM, checked in without glitches and had some breakfast. After we were on the plane, we waited almost 30 minutes for the food service to come with the food that we had to pay for if we wanted to eat or drink on our 3 hour flight. You can’t even get free water on US Airways.

We flew to Phoenix and our plane went right over Melissa’s place. Our flight from AZ to Calgary was on a much smaller plane and the seats as Norm described it were as if we were on a hay wagon. After 3 hours we were glad to relieve our bums. In spite of being worn out we were soon in awe of scenery. We stopped to get groceries and head to our condo. We enjoyed dinner at Patrinos then went home to bed.