Waterton Lakes

Waterton Lake

Canada has many fine national Parks. While staying in Pincher Creek, we decided to trip down to Waterton Lakes on a sunny afternoon. We were not disappointed.

Waterton Lakes is the Canadian part of the International Peace Park, at the north end of Glacier National Park in the US. The lake itself straddles the boundary between the US and Canada. It is nestled in the Canadian Rockies, as you can see from the pictures.

I'm the sort of person who is in awe of the mountainous terrain. I had to restrain myself from taking thousands of pictures, just because they were there. As it was, I took about 500.

Prince of Wales Hotel

We started our tour of the park in the village at the top of the lake. The village includes shops and restaurants, and the iconic Prince of Wales Hotel at the top of a mesa overlooking the lake. Tourists can catch a boat trip around the lake. Lodges and private cottages dot the town.

Waterton contains several campgrounds. One is near the village on the lake. Another is a winter camping site in the Copper Canyon.

Bighorn sheep grazing in town

Wildlife is abundant here, and the deer and the bighorn sheep know that they're safe from people in the park, so the wander around town just like the tourists. If they get tired, they just lay down in the shade of a cottage. I suspect that the neatly trimmed lawn are delicious to them, too. Of course, the tourists love to gawk at them, so traffic comes to a halt while everybody in the car gets a good look.

Foraging black bears

Later in the afternoon, we took the road into Copper Canyon, a long winding ravine that runs east-west between the mountains. An RCMP officer gave us directions to where a pair of black bears were foraging in the hillside meadow farther down the canyon. We had no difficulty locating them, we just stopped where all the cars were parked. They were about 200 yards up the hill from the road, fairly indifferent to our presence.

Finally, we realized that we had started too late in the day for this trip, though having the late afternoon sun for taking pictures was a bonus. We've just started on our northern adventure, and we realize that this is just the beginning. There's so much to see!

Consuelo shooting me shooting her

Consuelo discovered my secret that taking pictures is a way to visualize the landscapes with an added perspective. It forces you to frame the vastness in a place like Waterton in a very small window, and as a result, you start to look into the frame and see more detail. At least I do. The result is that she took my camera and went to work, depriving me of some of my fun. But she ha d that fun with the camera. Who know, this could become a photo team. 3 eyes are always better than one!