Overnight Trip to Jasper with Jax & Joel

On Phil's last weekend with us we headed back into the Rockies. After a not so quick stop in to pick up Jax and Joel the five of us were packed into Rangi and heading north through the Icefields Parkway to Jasper. Once again we were stopping every 15min for spectacular photo opportunities.
We finally arrive in Jasper just before dark and settled into our rather nice accomodation at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. We enjoyed a cosy evening eating gormet pizza and beer with Elk roaming around outside.
Sunday we packed up and headed south on Hwy93 and home for some well needed sleep.

 Lake Louise

 Peyto Lake

 Me and my darling

 The boys

Jax & Joel

One of the passes on hwy93

Columbia Icefields

Big Elk

Road to Jasper

Rocky Mountain Billy Goat

Rocky Mountain Goats

Athabasca Falls

View from our cabin at Jasper

Kananaskis & Radium with Phil

Our first weekend off while Phil was here Graham, Phil, Kirsten & I spent friday night with Jax & Joel at the Delta in Kanasakis. We were lucky to get a good room at the lodge wthanks to jax, and we quickly made ourselves home with cheese, crackers & appletons reserve. We had an epic diner session at the restuarant where we managed to clear it of all other customers with our ruckus.
The following morning Phil, Kirsten and I carried on to Radium for a dip in the hot pools. Once again we came across Bighorn Sheep on the road and we even found them on the baseball pitch in the middle of town!

Remnants of the massive forest fire this valley

Phil and myself chillin out at Olive Lake

Rangi the roadtrip beast

Pretty view

Lamb roast anyone??

This is the same spot Kirsten and I went Dog Sledding in winter

Bighorns on the Baseball pitch

Kananaskis Valley

Kirsten's Birthday

We had a big day planned for Kirsten's Birthday. It actually started the night before with a surprise cookies & cream birthday blizzard cake, it was all kinds of deliciousness!

Jax & Joel met up with Kirsten, Phil and I for lunch downtown at the Metropolitan, afterwards we enjoyed some retail therapy in Bankers Hall at the designer stores. In the afternoon we visited the Calgary Zoo to see the animals, where I was almost sprayed on by a Siberian tiger! Bloody cats.

In the evening Kirsten, Phil and I went to the Brad Paisley Concert for 4 hours of fantastic country music. The two warm up artists were awesome as well: Justin Moore, Darius Rucker (Hooty & the Blowfish lead singer).

The whole day was a hell of an experience.

Blizzard Cake

Calgary Tower Downtown

Muskox

Great Grey Owl

African Animals

Cheeky Squirrel having an icecream

Brad Paisley Concert:

Jonn'y Visit

Mid September we met up with Jonny and his parents in Banff for a day. They were travelling around western Canada for a few weeks with some family and friends. We enjoyed a day of walking around the town seeing the sights, visiting Lake Minawanka and enjoying a nice dinner and locally brewed beer in the evening.

It was nice seeing familiar faces and accents and we all had a fun day.

The Lovely Couple

 Jonny and Myself

Lake Minawanka

 The Crew

Cheeky Squirrel With His Cone

 One Of The Many Fantastic Views Around Banff

Day Trip To Drumheller

Early September Jax & Joel met up with us for a short day trip to the Badlands in Drumheller.  After discovering the new meaning of greasy breakfast at 'Humpty's' we headed North.  The town of Drumheller itself was a dive but the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology was something else! It houses the worlds largest collection of dinosaur bones in the middle of the Badlands.

T-Rex Skeleton

 Albertasaurus Having Lunch

 Badlands

Royal Tyrrel Museum of Palaeontology

British Columbia Trip Part 3 (Upper BC)

Day 9 after a relaxing evening in the top floor apartment of the Delta lodge in Whistler we awoke to another blue sky day. We decided to take the Peak to Peak gondola up Whistler Mountain which hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics. The photos will speak for themselves about how beautiful it was on top!  After our amazing morning, we jumped back into Rangi for a 9 hour journey through desolate mountain passes and Indian Reserves to Quesnel. 

Day 10 We packed down the tent in record time to escape the sandflies, all the while Whitetail deer were grazing next to us.  Today we headed to Prince George (the Northernmost point in our trip).  Prince George was nothing spectacular but we did find a few nice beers and bevvys to enjoy by our tent.  The evening turned into quite a ruccous with 2 weddings and Canada's version of outrageous fortune all in the one camping ground.

Day 11 We left the campground early on and headed towards Jasper.  Along the way we discovered a natural rainforest- so we broke up our trip with a short hike.  As we rolled into Jasper so did some very black clouds, unfortunately the campgrounds were full so we had to pitch 15km out of town.  We had a very wet night, but we were snug in our NZ sleeping bags.

Day 12 Was our last day where we headed south on the Jasper highway, via Rocky Mountain House.  We stopped into the Columbia Icefields and walked up along the Glaciers (which we were unable to do in Winter).  We also found one very cute black bear on our way home too.   4500kms on the clock we made it home- What a trip!!

Lapping it up at the Delta

On top of Whistler Mountain

Peak to Peak Gondola

Amazing lake dammed by fallen logs

View from our campsite in Prince George

Pretty blue bird

Little black bear crossing the road

Another pretty canadian lake

Columbia Glacier, Jasper National Park

Very large black bear on side of road (we stayed in the car for this one)