Chapter Nine - Wildlife Pursuit

Talk about experiencing God's majesty today. You have to marvel at His awesome creation when every corner you go around finds you wanting to take another picture. The mountains, lakes and the grandeur of it all is sometimes hard to take in. Before we got to Lake Louise yesterday, we saw a sign that said, "Watch out for Wildlife." So, out comes the camera with the big lens, you know, for those close up shots of the grizzly, but the only thing we saw yesterday was probably your common crow.

Today headed onto the Icefields Parkway on our way up to (and past) Jasper. Sure enough, here comes the "Watch out for Wildlife" sign plastered across the entire road. Once again we travelled hundred of kilometers (remember we are in Canada) with not even a dead carcass on the road, but views that were simply incredible. Lakes, waterfalls, icefields, glaciers, mountains and nothing but beautiful, picture-perfect scenes that could have come from hundreds of postcards.

And then - yes, it's

what every photographer wants to see - a crowd of people beginning to gather on the side of the road. But, for what? Inching closer we realized that a black bear had wandered out into a small pasture area right next to the road. Wow! I'd prayed for a bear, and now here it was right in front of us. After what seemed like a thousand pictures we moved on. I said to Janet, "if I got the bear I prayed for, then why not ask for a grizzly and a moose". Shortly before we left the Icefields, we came upon another crowd, and you would never believe it, here was a grizzly within about 50' of our motorhome, once again, quite content to be out in the open. Of course, I now expected the moose to come around the corner at any moment, but sad to say, that will have to wait for another day.

Got another beautiful campground this evening, and I'm making friends with a lot of the local mosquitoes.