A drive on Ice field Parkway

On day 2 of the Banff trip, we were booked on a bus tour to see the Athabasca Glacier. Will write a separate post on the Glacier itself. This post is about the what we saw on the almost all day drive to the place. 

The previous post on this trip is here..

We started at 8AM. We did not know they had a pickup point right outside our hotel. We could have got more sleep! Instead we parked downtown and paid dearly for it. The bus had 23 people plus the driver in it. By the end of the day we were all introduced to everyone and we all got to talk at the various stops. It was an international crowd, folks from BC Canada, Brazil, Australia, UK, Belgium and the two of us representing the US!

The driver was a local 20 year old kid, doing this as a summer job. Hindsight being 20/20, we realized at the glacier that we could have just driven to the Glacier ride point in our rental car in an hour and 15 minutes with stops on the way and saved a good 2 hours to do something else. While it is true that there is only one company that is allowed to ride the monster trucks on the Glacier (Columbia IceField), you don't have to go in a bus from Banff to that place!! You can directly go there and get tickets. 

That said, we still enjoyed being passengers, interacting with strangers and stopping at all these points that the kid stopped the bus at, which we would not have otherwise seen. (he took us to vista points that were not the main parking lots.. which helped get great shots with no crowd in the background!). So from that point, it was a big plus. The only time we could have saved was for waiting for 23 people getting in and out of the bus at every stop instead of just the two of us. The kid did a great job of entertaining us during the drive! 

There was a much bigger plus. He stopped when he saw a car slow down in front of us (I would not have) and we got to see a bear walk by us, up  close and personal.. that was the highlight of the drive.

We also had lunch at a nice quiet picnic spot next to the river. 

This drive on Ice field parkway is very scenic. We go all along the bow river all the way from Banff to Jasper National park. The drive in the car would have taken 2 1/2 hours, but we started at 8 and reached at 12:30 including all the photo stops. 

The spots we could not stop at on the way up, we did on the way down. 

First stop: The Lake Louise Village visitor center. This place had a bunch of places to get breakfast and coffee and it was the first rest stop after an hour plus of driving. Every place had a long line. We were lucky to get some breakfast in the Trailhead Cafe, where the line was at least moving! San had a Vegan Samosa which she rated highly!

We started all smiles.. a good sign. This was in the parking lot waiting for the bus. Did I mention we were early? This is also a "warmup selfie" !

Next stop: Herbert lake

We walked through spruce and aspen tree lined trails to the lake (this was our first of many such lake shore visits over the next 48 hours!)

the path ends and voila... the shades of green and blue and the transparent water hits you!

Next stop.. lunch at Coleman creek..

Next stop (more like slow down..) BEAR!! Unfortunately we could not open the windows in the bus.. this is the best I could get with the SLR from the other side of the bus through a tinted window.. it was an exciting thing for us to see this bear walk along the freeway!

at this point I would like to mention that we were expecting to see a lot of animals on the drive.. but the only other non human creature we saw during that day was this ground squirrel at the lunch stop near the river. 

Last but one stop was a waterfalls across the mountains.. there was a family of four from Belgium. The couple and their two daughters exactly 3 years older than our two girls. Their girls helped us take a lot of photos. This was a good shot of us.. no falls, but I love this picture .. so it goes in the blog!

A video that captures all these stops including the "bear sighting". 

If you want to do things fast, just go by yourself from Banff to Jasper. (then again, you might save an hour tops.. given you have to get a pass .. the bus already had a pass and was waved in).  If you want to just sit back, relax and meet folks and go at a slow pace (if you have more than two days to cover the place), then take the bus tour from Banff. It is actually a decent experience.  They also give you a packed lunch, water bottles etc. (Veggie option included, which again was rated highly by San). 

We enjoyed the drive and the group of people we ended up with!

Now that I am able to sit at a laptop and write longer posts, going to get back to the routine! The next post on the actual Glacier walk tomorrow.. 

Alamere Falls - an amazing hike

We finally made it to Alamere falls. It has been on our wish list for a long time and we were planning to do this with the full group sometime in spring.. A last minute pre birthday request from wife to give this a shot, made me say yes!

This was the longest hike for me in post Covid times. I am told that I have now graduated to try Black mountain and Falls rest. We will see about that.. have managed to pull the muscle on the left leg and have been limping around since yesterday. Hopefully the hot room will heal this quickly!

Started at 6AM sharp from Cupertino and drove almost 2 hours to the Palomarin trailhead which is past the Point Reyes bird observatory. Got to see the sunrise just as we were crossing SFO into Marin on the golden gate bridge!

Drove past a lot of scenery and started hiking exactly at 8AM... 

We hiked 12+ miles over 5+ hours with a 20 min eating break at the falls. There is a shortcut where you can climb down and climb back up to the falls, but it is not recommended by the park service. Lots of accidents in that section as the shale rocks break into little pieces on the cliff sides. 

We decided to go through the coastal scenic route, bypass only the last 0.1 miles to avoid the Wildcat campground and walk along the beach the last mile to the falls. As fate would have it the tide was closing in on us even as we made it to the falls. 

We hike past two lakes, Bass lake and Pelican lake. They were both really beautiful!

We crossed the creek like three times and the rushing water was good to hear.. last few hikes, we didn't see any water in the creeks!

You can see Point Reyes from the high point on the Coastal trail (if you take the shortcut you will miss this!)

The fog, the water spray from the falls, the overlapping cliff faces.. the approach to the falls on the beach side is simply breathtaking.. 

But, there is a catch.. We had to time it and run through stretches to avoid the waves as they came all the way to the cliff faces!

Have to try long exposure shots when we are a waterfall !!! 

Could not get all three upper falls in one shot with long exposure.. too many people. With photoshop averaging, can try it.. but don't have the time. There is a definite chance we will revisit this while we are still able to climb up.. will give it a shot then!

Given we had wet feet and pants, there was no way to walk back along the beach and we decided to climb up to make it back to the trail. This made the 14 mile hike into a 12 mile hike which was also welcome! It was challenging to climb back up but we were glad. Got to see the three upper falls (which you can only if you do this climbing up business). You can see it in the video below..

Some more photos..

this was my attempt at an artistic shillouette..

Once back in the parking lot, we got to eat a packed lunch, have some hot tea and drove back for 2 1/2 hours as we got caught both in local traffic around Stinson beach and San Francisco city. 

We expected to see more people given it was a long weekend. There was not much of a crowd. We practially had the beach to ourselves on the way to the falls and were met by 10 people, all of them had taken the shortcut climb down! 

Strongly recommend this place! However, try to read tide timings and go along the beach to the falls and climb up to see the upper falls. It is worth it. That said, wear the right shoes and gloves if possible so you don't cut your hands while climbing up. Also it would be a good idea to switch to sandals for the walk along the beach! 

Strongly recommend this for a day trip, on the right day with the right tide!

Long weekend trip...

Finally got to edit the gabazillion video clips from last weekends trip and compiled them into one!

It has almost become a ritual to haul the family to some remote wilderness at least once or twice a year during the long weekends (if we are not in India or Australia to meet family!).

The drive through the mountains of Montana was by far the best scenic driving experience I have had. The drive to rainbow point at Bryce canyon, the scenic Route 1 in California and the Great Australian drive are close contenders! Rolling hills, mile after mile for a few hours at an elevation of 6000+ feet with a view of the snow capped mountains in Glacier and Yellowstone national parks...words escape me!

You can also see the hotel we stayed in! Open the window and you see a raging river rush by, mountains all around. I was telling San that maybe we should retire here, and she promptly replied that I would get bored if I stayed here for more than a week. She is probably right.

And last but not least, the Trains from the Northern railroad that joined us during parts of our highway drives. They had upto four engines and this is the first time I actually got to see these huge engines in action, puffing away.

Jr. and baby being Thomas train fans, enjoyed the sight of these trains immensely. Without confessing, let me just say that the train was moving away from the camera at a relative velocity of around 130-140 miles per hour and we didn't even cross two thirds of the coaches in a 30 second clip!

I have convinced everyone here that our next long weekend summer trip will be to Glacier National Park to see the Great Northern railroad trains.

Until then..

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