We have spent the last week hanging out with our families here in Willow Springs. It's been a nice rest, regroup, reconnect time. We leave from St. Louis next Sunday headed for Tanzania. I will post a few photos of our nice relaxing time here and our packing job for Africa. After our 3 weeks in Africa we will spend a couple of weeks in Europe and then it's back to work time. I guess that will be the end of this blog, although I hate to give it up because I enjoy it so much.

We stopped by to visit our pal Brice in Mandan, North Dakota again this year. He has a nice place right on the Missouri River.

Brice and his girlfriend Katia ready for trip to the local honky-tonk bar.

Katia, Dave, and Brice down at the fishin' hole.

Water Lakes National Park in Canada and Glacier National Park in the US border each other and form an international national park. The US side is much bigger, but they are both very nice and for all you hikers out there I highly recommend a trip. We only got to take a couple of hikes while we were there, but I'd love to go back and do more. Lots of wildlife as well, we saw 3 black bears (a mamma and 2 cubs), lots of mountain goats and bighorn sheep, tons of friendly (too friendly?) deer, and the most obese squirrels I've ever seen.

One of the over-friendly deer on the Canadian side. When we woke up there was a huge one right outside the RV. Dave almost hit it with the door!

Really cool waterfall on the Canada side. See how it is cutting through the curved bedding planes of the rock?

Here's a squirrel picture for Lane. This has got to be the fattest ground squirrel I've ever seen.

Beautiful scenery along the trails.

Mountain goats.

Hiking along the skyline trail to one of the chalets. There are two chalets in the park you can hike to and spend the night there. We just hiked there and back in one day, though.

Since we’ve been in the Canadian Rockies we’ve hiked well over 100 kilometers. The National Parks up here Jasper, Banff, Yoho, and Kootenay along with a few connected Provincial Parks offer almost unlimited opportunities for day hikes and backpacking. Also, unlike U.S. National Parks they don’t have rules excluding dogs from the trails so Molly has hiked all but the most difficult or bear-infested with us. After 2 weeks in the area I think we’ve started to get jaded, like, that was a great hike, but not as good as such-and-such. Really, we have become picky and want all the hikes to be as great as the best. The other day we returned to the RV after a day of hiking to see 4 grizzlies in the campground. We’d hiked probably 20 k and we were tired, as soon as we drove into the campground we see a mamma grizzly bear and 3 cubs. Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures, my camera was in the backseat of the Jeep and I couldn’t get to it. When we got to the RV we ate dinner and Dave and I both crashed out at 8:00. Maybe we’ve just had too much excitement, but it’s time to head south I think. We’d probably kill ourselves if we lived up here, we need to spend a few days somewhere less exciting so we can rest!

More beautiful mountains.

Big horn sheep

Mountain lake

This is Dolomite Peak. The Dolomite Pass hike in Banff National Park is by far one of the coolest hikes I've ever undertaken.

Lake along the Dolomite Pass hike

Glacier in Jasper National Park

Dave on top of Saddleback Peak in Banff National Park

The beautiful Lake Louise in Banff

Finally some Canadian moose in Yoho National Park

This is Tawkakka Falls in Yoho National Park. Apparently 'tawkakka' means magnificent in the Cree language. I can see their point!

Another beautiful view

While hiking in Yoho National Park we were doing our typical 'bear aware' hike, making lots of noise, we even had Molly with us. We turned a corner and this dear was just in the middle of the trail eating a bush. Boy, was it surprised to see us even with all the noise and the stinky dog. Glad it wasn't a grizzly.

Waterfall along a hike in Johnston Canyon

Mountains at the end of the Johnston Canyon hike.

Well, we've seen so many people traveling wearing just the most inappropriate clothing imagineable. Finally, when we saw this I decided these people should be put up for everyone to appreciate along with us. :) Here is the first addition to our wall of shame:

Please, please, unless you are actually running a marathon, leave the super-short running shorts at home! This guy doesn't even have the excuse of being European or anything. More importantly, he wasn't alone: why did his wife and kids let him wear those?

These photos were actually taken before we left BC and came over to where we are now, the Mile 0 is in Dawson Creek and the giant beaver is in, where else, Beaver Creek!

Here is the famous mile 0 of the Alaska Highway. We did drive the whole thing, we just did it backwards since we didn't start at mile 0.

Dave, with the giant beaver, the main attraction in Beaver Creek.

Speaking of dodgy tourist attractions, here's another. Me with the giant stuffed moose mounty in Jasper National Park.

The Berg Lake trail in Mt. Robson Provincial Park is a famous, beautiful backpacking trail. Unfortunately, it also gets about 200 people a day hiking the darn thing so we went to nearby Mt. Fitzwilliam trail instead. When we signed in on Aug. 15th, no one had signed in before us since the 12th. So it’s a lot less used, to say the least. We hiked in, spent the night, hiked back to the end of the trail, and went back to our campsite. We intended on spending another night at our campsite but we were becoming suspicious that our water source was not all that great. Since we’d been drinking the stream water, even though we’d purified it, we kept feeling dehydrated. It looked pretty mineral-y so we thought maybe it actually had something like salt in it and we weren’t helping ourselves by drinking lots of it. So we hiked out that day. Drinking dodgy water just kind of ruins the fun of a backpacking trip.

So, we arrived here in Jasper National Park ready for a lot of great hiking. Thanks to a book Andy McConville bequeathed to me when he left Core Lab ‘Classic Hikes in the Canadian Rockies’ we were prepared. Thanks, Andy. So we started on a day hike to a place called Sulfur Ridge near the hot springs. We hadn’t been walking 5 minutes when two women walking towards us practically jumped out of their skin and start running at a high rate of speed down the path towards us. Now, people always say ‘Never run from a bear’ and I consider it pretty sound advice. They say it provokes their predatory instinct. I know with Molly if a cat runs from her she chases after it as fast as she can. If a cat doesn’t run, she sniffs it curiously and usually walks away. Now, if I was sure a bear meant me harm I might run anyway but as long as it is minding it’s own business I’m not going to provoke the bear by running, or doing anything else to irritate it. So when the women ran by and we asked them what was wrong and they responded ‘bear’. I said, “well, you probably shouldn’t run”, especially as they were running right towards us who didn’t know what was going on. If the bear had been chasing them they would have brought it right to us, who would have had no choice then but to try and outrun them and hope they got eaten instead of us. Of course, the bear wasn’t chasing them, so Dave and I continued slowly up the path making a lot of noise so as not to surprise the bear. We thought it might move off the path so we could continue on. As we got closer we saw the bear, who took an aggressive attitude right away. Then we saw her cub, such a cute little guy, scurry up the tree next to her! So, we yielded the path and went back down, walking slowly down the path backwards to keep an eye on her. When we got down the women said ‘Did you see the bear?’ And we told them, yes we had seen her and her cub. They then proceeded to lecture us on how running was actually the correct response. Have you ever noticed when people are killed by bears it’s usually in Canada? I think now we know why!

Isn't that the cutest!

Grrr! Mad mamma bear who will rip your guts out.

We left the Yukon and are back in BC now, we've seen wild buffalo, caribou, Stone sheep and moose since we've been here. No bears this time, though, which is strange. I miss my bears! It's been weeks since a bear sighting.

The buffalo caused quite a traffic jam!

One of the Stone sheep they have up here, which are like the Dall sheep of Alaska only not white, and have smaller horns than the big horn sheep.

A family of caribou.

In Stone Mountain Provincial Park we hiked up Summit Peak. We eventually turned around, the weather was bad. The wind speed had to be over 80 mph, at one point Molly was almost launched off the side of the mountain! After that we decided we should go back down. Both Dave and I were pushed around by the wind, also. This is looking back down at the campground from on the mountain.

The day we left Alaska and headed back into Canada we had a strange occurance. We were headed for one of the campgrounds in Kluane National Park but our navigation and driving did not match up and we ended up passing it by. When we stopped to regroup and figure out if we should go back or go on to a different campground for some reason I got out and walked around to the back of the RV. I guess it was divine help because our hitch was all messed up and the Jeep was about to fly off! The extra safetly cables we have wouldn't have helped, either, because the entire hitch apparatus was coming off the RV and would have been flying down the road with the Jeep. Somewhere along the way we had lost a bolt and the metal of the hitch was actually tearing. Luckily, we found a welding shop in Haines Junction (a town of a few hundred people) and the guy fixed it that day for $220 CAD but it looked like he did a good job. While we waited, we got to go hiking again in Kluane National Park, so we still had a good day.

The view from 'King's Throne', a cirque on the mountain.

Me in the cirque.

More mountains...