Oh, Canada!

Medicine Hat, Calgary: Canadian cities that went flying by as Mark kept his foot on the fuel pedal. By dinnertime, we entered Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies and set up for two nights at a campground. Grey clouds shrouded the nearby towering peaks, parting every once in a while to reveal shattered rocks along the ridge lines.

​The next morning, we decided to hike to an alpine lake about 5 miles up in the mountains.  Perhaps we should have turned around when we came to the snow piles. 

​By the time we got to the lake, it started to snow (and the batteries on my iPhone camera died).
 
The next day we hiked to another turquoise blue alpine spot, Lake Moraine where canoers braved freezing water temperatures and cold gusty winds.

On the third day we drove north through the Columbia Icefields, where multiple glaciers spill over the frozen peaks. 

​We walked up to the foot of one of the glaciers that is melting so quickly from global warming that it will be nothing but a memory in 100 years. 

​An amazing stream of melting ice fell from the glacier then quickly turned into a roaring river, headed to the Arctic Ocean.

We will spend two nights in Jasper, a town at the northern end of the park, then resume our trek into the vast wilderness of the Yukon Territory and further north.