So, I took a week’s vacation last month, and the haircut was midway through that. I’ve been really sluggish about uploading photos from that vacation, but I’ve got the first few batches up on Flickr, at any rate. The main part of the trip was a visit to Edmonton to visit my brother Mike and his fiancée Jasmine, who just moved to a new apartment downtown. (Note: to see many of those photos, you’ll need to create a Flickr account and get me to add you as a friend.) That was fun – I’d never seen the centre of Edmonton before, and I had a fun time drifting around on bike. It was surprisingly easy to take on bike – calm backstreets, and pushbuttons at the arterials on many bike routes. I suspect it would be a lousy place to walk or take transit, though: there’s just too low a density, so there’s nothing in walking distance.
Mike and I then drove four hours to Jasper national park, next to the BC border. We did a nice hike through the Tonquin Valley, despite substantial paranoia about bear activity. We didn’t get to do the complete hike – a little too short of time, and it would have required a car at either trailhead – but we saw the Ramparts, which were definitely the highlight of the trip.
Mike went back to Edmonton, and I was planning to catch the train from Jasper in the afternoon, but I had enough time to do a quick hike through the Maligne Canyon, a spectacularly deep canyon carved through limestone bluffs.
I’ll post again with the second half of the trip once I’ve uploaded the rest of the photos.
