Wednesday, July 11, 2007 – Revelstoke – Glacier Natl Park

Another day of spectacular vistas with new aspects. As you will see with the today’s photo selections, we spent some time in Cedar Forest Boardwalk in Glacier National Park. There are several of these walks in the park above the vegetation to protect it.

To recap the day’s activity, we left Revelstoke late this morning and drove back up Trans Canada Hwy 1 to Roger’s Pass in Glacier National Park. There are reported to be almost 400 glaciers within the park (although I don’t know if this count was before or after “global warming”). I do know that you can see many glaciers from the highway, but not all. I think you would need one of the helicopter rides to see them all.

Revelstoke is approximately 2,000 feet nestled at the juncture of four valleys. Glacier National Park summit is approximately 4,400 feet – not as high as one might expect given the history of road and rail closures at the summit due to snow avalanches in the winter. So even though you’re at Roger’s Pass summit, you’re still dwarfed by the surrounding mountains.

In case you’re wondering about the photo choices, we elected not to use the WOW pictures of glaciers, mountains, and waterfalls. There were too many and we did want to include a few of the forest. By the way, I thought taking pictures of mountains and snow was a tough exposure, try taking shots in the deep woods with patches of sunlight! As a result, the photos can’t really do justice to the feeling of greenery, surrounded by massive trees, but we try.

The first was Margaret sitting down to take it all in. You can see the boardwalk climbing some way up the hill before looping back down. The second is of me holding apart the two trees was the walk favorite. In the minutes it took to move past these two trees, I watched at least 5 other folks make similar poses! I hope you can see the final photo – I call the green glowing tree. The sunlight was reflecting off the giant green leaves back on the bark of the tree making it glow. The giant leaves by the way are called Devil’s Club (I think that’s correct) and have extremely nasty looking thorns which were a major pain to the early settlers, pioneers, and railroad workers.

Other events of the day. While stopped at one of your typical WOW sights, a car bearing Texas plates pulled up behind us to also take photos. They were on their way to Lake Louise. We compared notes on the high speed drivers on this stretch of road. They certainly aren’t taking in the view – maybe they’ve seen it before?

Coming back, the temperature was 92 degrees. Shortly afterwards, we passed a family (including a baby) of Mountain Goats by the side of the road, grazing on the grass. Why in the world were they at this low elevation (probably about 2,500 feet), in the heat, in harm’s way from the speeding autos? And they didn’t even blink or look up when we went by! We have now seen the two indigenous goats and sheep of the mountains (the big-horn sheep are brownish with curving horns; the mountain goats are white with straighter / shorter horns and goatees).

While eating our lunch at one of the Cedar Forest Walk picnic tables, a green bus rolled in with a load of senior citizens (M. They were no older than us.), each carrying their lunches. The sign on the bus said “Big Green Gospel” – and had a British Columbia license plate.

A beautiful, bold stellar jay tried to wangle some handouts hopping across the picnic table. He was so colorful, bright blue and black. He then flew down to the newly cut grass and spread out – fanning out his tail and spreading his wings across the grass. He’d cock his head and look into the leaves. We watched, wondering what in the world he was doing. We decided, from glimpses of another bird in the foliage, he had a lady love in the trees above and was courting.

I did forget to mention when we were in the Safeway store (back in Canmore, Alberta) several days ago, the lady announcing various sale items in the store said, “Ya’ll come back and shop.” – definitely Southern accent! We would have liked to know what part of southern Canada she was from!

Tomorrow, wine country!