Wednesday, June 22, 2011

What an incredibly beautiful morning! I think mornings are the best up here. We face east so we get the morning sun. I love to sit outside drinking my morning coffee and watch the shadows from the mountains slowly creep across the valley as the sun sheds its light on the lake. It twinkles on the water like a million tiny diamonds…amazing!

It’s so quiet and peaceful here. The only noise we hear is the occasional sound of tires on the gravel road across the lake. Once in a while a plane or helicopter will fly over…other than that there’s only the sounds of nature. If there’s been rain, we can hear the creeks flowing into the lake…this morning the birds are out in full force enjoying the sunshine and a chipmunk that Oso has cornered in a crevice in our little rock patio is busy chirping at him.

The sun feels so good after all the rain we’ve had. I can’t wait to get out today for a hike or maybe go fishing. We picked up fishing licenses in Canmore the other day and there’s some nice trout in the lake. We had a group of fishermen out for their annual camping trip last week and they caught some nice sized fish. The largest was a nice fat 23 inch trout…it took the trophy in their yearly contest to see who can catch the largest fish. Of course they had boats and we don’t but I’m hopeful we’ll have a nice trout dinner tonight if we fish by the mouth of a creek that flows into the lake. We’ll give it a try anyway.

When we arrived at the campsite there were still patches of snow here and there. The rain washed most of that away though and now the only snow around is what we see trapped in the deep crevices of the mountains. Right across the lake from our campsite, there is a big patch of snow that stretches almost from the top of the mountain to the bottom. There’s a hiking trail that leads up to it so that will make a nice hike one day. There’s another hike I’d like to do that takes about and hour and starts in the campground. It goes up to a huge waterfall in the mountains behind us.

The other day I noticed a woman raking up some stuff on a road that leads north from the campsite. I went to talk to her and it turns out she’s with a group that does dog sledding in the winter. The rest the dogs in the area she was cleaning so there was lots of dog hair and shavings that they put down for the dogs to lay on. The road leads quite a ways north and is another hike I’d like to check out. There is so much to do and see here. Everywhere you look the views are more spectacular than the last. It’s really hard to describe how magnificent it really is.

We’ve seen number of animals…plenty of Rocky Mountain Sheep…a mama and baby trotted through the grassy area between us and the lake yesterday afternoon…the baby was so little yet but had no trouble keeping up with mom. There are lots of mule deer and white tail around…we’ve seen elk and moose by the road as well as bear. One of the women who works at the campsite to the south said she saw a black wolf on her way up one day. She said it was laying by the side of the road and she thought it was hurt…turns out it was fine and was just comfy in that one spot. Tom said it was likely playing wolf…waiting for someone to stop and come see if it was ok and as soon as they reached a hand out to the wolf it would jump up and grab them…ha, ha…I’m not sure the wolves have actually considered baiting humans that way.

Well, I think it’s time to go get something accomplished today…fishing I think…a great way to spend the morning.