Today, the weather has been absolutely beautiful. The sun is out in full force and so are the Calgarians. We started the day on Peter's patio enjoying a couple of cups of coffee and some walnut banana bread that I had made the day before. Heaven forbid we throw away a ripe banana or two. From the patio you can see the mountains in the distance as well as the Bow River that is located directly behind Peter's condo. It is very peaceful on the patio and I think that I will enjoy sitting out on the patio a lot while I am here. It was a little cool this morning, about 50, but tonight should be great.
By 8:30 we were in the car headed toward the mountains. The drive was less than a hour. Not to far out of town, a huge deer ran across the highway in front of us. We slowed down and it stopped for a second or two and just turned around and looked at us. The first official stop was at Elbow River Provincial Park. We walked a little trail, less than 1 killometer, that led to a beautiful waterfall on the Elbow River. It is hard to put into words everything that you hear and see at a waterfall. This one did not have a huge drop but we were very close to it and you could really see that the volume of water cascading over the rocks was tremendous. We did stick our hands in the river and it was VERY cold as it is snow melt. There are two rivers that we have seen today, the Bow and the Elbow. I think that they meet somewhere near Calgary but I am not exactly sure where.
Our next stop was at a "pond" called the Forgetmenot Pond. It is a small lake that is so clear you can really see almost to the bottom of the lake. We saw quite a few things here that we had not seen before. There was a diving class going on and there were divers in and out of the water. As we continued walking around we noticed that there were little air bubbles escaping from the bottom of the water making ripples on the surface. It was really odd so we stepped closer to see if there were any fish. We saw no fish, just these little bubbles. We are going to look up more about it but it was fascinating to see the little streams of bubbles rise here and there around the pond. We detoured off the trail and found the Elbow River not far away. We had the binoculars and at one point saw a herd of 10 big horned sheep in the distance. Several of them had the big curved horns and several of them were obviously young. More on them in a minute. The next thing that we found was the waste, actually we found poop. Those of you who know Peter well, know that he is always looking for anything that is a little different. We came upon this place, not far from the river, that was apparently a pooping place for bears. There were probably 8 or 10 large mounds of the stuff. Amazing I know that WE found piles of poop. We also found another kind of poop that Peter thought was deer or elk poop. We do have pictures so if anyone is interested, let me know and I will forward them to you.
On the drive out of the park, the herd of big horned sheep that we had seen earlier were close to the highway. We pulled off quickly and got great pictures. They got within about 20 to 30 feet of Peter. The largest male stopped, looked and then guided his herd across the highway and onto a rocky trail. We probably watched them 10 minutes. It was fascinating.
We left the park by about 11:30 and watched the cars pour into the park. We were glad that we had gotten an early start. On the way back we stopped at a little bakery and had a light snack. The day is not over yet but I wanted to get this down so that I did not forget any of it. It really was a nice day and one that we will try to repeat when Karla and Cody get here.
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