Canadian Rockies – June 2014

The Canadian Rockies are very beautiful and I really enjoy helping people explore them. Last week I had the privilege of taking two Belgian relatives through Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper with lots of stops along the way. This blog post will outline some of the things we saw.

One of the first things to remember about traveling to national parks is that these are spaces that we share, both with each other and with the plants and animals that live there. A simple way of thinking about it might be: take pictures and memories, leave everything else in peace. Imagine what would happen if each of the 4 million annual visitors to Banff National Park decided they needed to pick one flower or take one stone…

So instead we cross our fingers and hope that the weather will be good enough for us to see the mountain tops, and the animals will feel like munching on things near the road and paths we travel on.

The best way to increase the chance of seeing interesting things in the mountains is to look around. It is amazing how many people are so focused on the destination that they are barely present on the journey… Animals tend to like shade and shelter, they will browse along eating beside the road but can be difficult to spot if they are even a few steps into the forest. So glance into clearings, look at the shores of lakes and ponds, stare up at the mountains; you will enjoy the journey and massively improve your chances of seeing animals!

Here are some of the animals you might find (these photos were all taken in June 2014 with an iPhone and edited with PicMonkey, a free photo editing site):

Raven taking flight near Columbia Icefield, Canadian Rockies – 2014

Male and female wapiti near Jasper, Canadian Rockies – 2014

Black bear near Saskatchewan River Crossing, Canadian Rockies – 2014

There are also grizzly bears!We didn’t get the best picture, but please keep in mind that the grizzly was only 20 feet from the road… we were trying not to stop and disturb it so we kept rolling.

Grizzly near Lake Minnewanka, Banff National Park – June 2014

Here are some of the wildflowers you might see in the Canadian Rockies:

Clockwise from top left: tiger lily, wild rose, Indian paint brush, fireweed, cinquefoil.

If you would like more information about these flowers please click on the links embedded in the following. Wikipedia is a fantastic shared resource, we can help each other learn cool things about plants, like their fancy names:

tiger lily = Lilium
wild rose = Rosa acicularis
Indian paint brush = Castilleja
fireweed = Chamerion angustifolium
cinquefoil = Potentilla