Waterton Park

October 16th

Oh where to begin!  Today was FABULOUS!  It all began by waking up in my tree house type bed (remember the lofted bed in the B&B).  We awoke to the smell of a delish breakfast being made downstairs.  So we all rolled out of bed and headed down to the breakfast area.  I had a fancy French toast concoction and it was good.  Linds had the same and Britt had some eggs and pancakes.

While we ate breakfast we made friends with the friendly and quirky Canadian named Tom.  He had wanted to get away for a few days and had been chilling at this B&B since Thursday.  He had actually been staying in the room across from us which was a shock to us since we thought we were the only ones staying there.  He was actually shocked to find out we were there too. Haha!

Actually Brittny woke up in the middle of the night to some real trippy music playing.  Come to find out Tom had stayed up late and since he didn’t know we were across the hall, he had to music playing pretty loud.  It was really funny as we were realizing that we were hall neighbors.  We had a great time chatting it up with him and hearing about his life as a counselor. 

Around 11am we headed out to Waterton Park to go exploring.  We had a blast just driving around, finding a neat spot, then exploring, and taking lots of pictures.  We went along some lakes, creeks, hills, mountains, and what not. It is just gorgeous out here!  I know I keep saying that, but seriously breath taking!! 

We hiked around this one area called Red Rock Canyon.  It is where a stream has carved a Canyon down through Red Rocks, clever name, right!?  We actually climbed down the small canyon and walked along the stream.  It was so much fun. 

Afterwards we headed down a trail to go find a waterfall that was about 2 miles down the trail.  As we walked we were real chatty and were singing random songs to help scare off bears.  You are supposed to be loud so you don’t come up on them and startle them.  Normally if they hear you, they will go the opposite way…unless you startle them because then you are in trouble.  So about ½ mile into the hike we look up and there are 4 elk-ish looking animals starring at us.  They were standing on the trail about 100 feet from us.  They stood there for a bit, and then the biggest one stepped forward as to tell us now just turn around and leave us along.  We were oh dang, time to go.  Cheryl our nursing friend had told us that they would do that and that just meant you need to just calmly head back.  So we did just as she said and went back to the car.  I was really bummed because I really wanted to see the waterfall.  Boo Hiss!

When we were almost back to our car we ended up running into a small family of mountain goats.  We were pretty close and were able to get a few good shots of them.  To help avoid them we just went through the tall grass off the trail to get back to the car.  It was weird that within 30 minutes we had two run-ins with animals…crazy!

We still wanted to get some more hiking in so we headed further into the park.  On the way we made a stop at the Prince of Wales Hotel which had already closed for the season.  We got out and walked all around it and I even climbed up a fire escape to stand on one of its porches to get a good view.  It is located up on this hill that overlooks one of the lakes in the valley of the mountains.  It was stunning!! However, it was extremely windy so we didn’t stick around for too long.

Next we drove around the city of Waterton even though most of it was closed up for the season.  It is a cute town and you can see that it was be so fun to come here in the summer.  As we drove around looking at everything, we saw tons of deer just hanging out in people’s yards.  They did not care at all that we were driving beside them taking pictures.   They just kind of starred at you like have you never seen a deer? Ha!

We then parked the car near the pebble beach of the lake hoping that we would find the trail head to the trail we were looking for, Bertha’s.  We noticed a small, semi-over grown path that we headed up.   Eventually as walked it we popped out on the actual trail.  Wooo hoo!  Unfortunately I started to get a bad feeling about being on the trail.  It was starting to get dusk since it was about 5ish.  Also we have been told that bears are most active early in the morning and again at dusk.  As we began walking we ran into a couple that said we would be fine and off we went.  As we walked we passed two other groups of people who were heading back to their cars.  I still had a weary feeling and didn’t like that everyone was heading back as we were just trekking along.  When we made it to the first look out spot, we were standing taking pictures when then this man and his two dogs stopped over to warn us of the large grizzly about 400 feet away from us.  From where we were we could not see it, but the man had been further down the trail when he noticed the bear and then saw us.  It was so nice of him to let us know since we had no clue we were so close to one.  We quickly grabbed our stuff and headed back with him ha! So I guess my intuition was right and we did not need to hangout on that trail for too long.

Once we got back to our car and were heading out we noticed all of the cars parked along a road with people standing, watching, taking pictures, and looking through binoculars.  They were all watching this HUGE herd of elk “beugaling.”  This is what they call the sounds the male elk make in mating season to attract their mate.  It was neat to see and funny to hear them.  Linds made friends with this older man who let us look through his high tech binoculars.  With those it made it seem as if you were standing right in front of the elk.  Super neat!!

After our day in the park we were famished.  That same man who had told us about the bear also told us of the only restaurant nearby, so we headed that way to get some grub.  It was this small general store with a Mexican restaurant in the middle of nowhere.  Random.  However, it was pretty tasty even though it was overpriced. 

After eating it was time to head back to America.  We were doing great on time because our main concern was to get to the border by 11pm and we were way ahead of that.  The lady at the border was super nice and welcomed us back to the States.  Home sweet home :)

What a good weekend.  I highly recommend trips to Alberta Canada!!  Everyone is friendly and they have a great state park with beautiful scenery!!