A Canadian Adventure - Day 43

Thursday 14 September 2017

Prairie View Lookout Hiking Trail

A drizzly morning found us, on our 15th wedding anniversary, taking advantage of the most convenient laundromat in the world. It's attached to the motel building and is a fifteen second walk from our rooms. It's amazing how much laundry you can find when you try on a trip like this (well, we have been camping for 13 of the last 15 nights).

In between those short walks dealing with laundry we managed to devour a shelf load of chocolate croissants and a whole heap of blueberries and yogurt.

Then it was time for coffee. The coffee machine works well and is re-supplied with ammunition every day. It's like one of Al and Hazel's.

A trip to the visitor centre followed, and some advice was taken. The weather further south may be a bit better, or so we were told. So a 45 km drive ensued, taking us to the start of a walk by Barrier Lake, no longer in the Rockies. It was lunchtime,  so we enjoyed our goats cheese and tomato buns, boiled eggs, crisps, etc in the car before setting off on the circular walk at 1 pm.

Most walks in this area are 'there and back' efforts so it was good to walk a circular route. The track rose gently through trees for some time, after 5 km reaching a high clearing on a sharp ridge with good views.

A bit further along the ridge we reached our high point of about 1900 metres, with fine views towards ... prairies. But with cloud laden mountains still in view closer to home.

The rest of the circuit was along delightful woodland paths with intermittent mountain views. And it didn't rain. Excellent. Not many flowers apart from lingering bellflowers, but plenty of difficult to identify birds and squealing squirrels. And a squealing Sue when a large lump of melting snow found its way down her neck.

We saw five people all day.

After the easy drive back to Canmore we topped up with supplies, went for a quick bimble by the creek, and enjoyed a lazy evening at home with some rather tasty provisions and a nice bottle of wine.

Apart from the first picture, today's images were all taken during our excellent little walk. Unfortunately we did not record the lovely Canmore sunset.

Hic .... zzzzz

14 km with 550 metres ascent, in 4 hours, and 4 km in 22.40.