Lunch in the Canadian Rockies

What can be more important than lunch? My favorite parts of today's adventure were lunching in the Canadian wilderness next to a raging river surrounded by mountains. We had just passed "The Inkpots" -- five bomb crater sized blue green ponds with cool water bubbling up from the bottom. One picture attached shows the river and mountains beyond. The pictures of falls in Sylvan's pictures below are on the civilized portion of the walk up to the inkpots. In those surroundings, trail mix tastes great. But we had to go on to the the Chateau Fairmount in Lake Louise for a real lunch in luxurious surroundings-- the second picture from our table showing the view out toward the lake through a curved top window. Ah, both are the life! We are now exhausted, back at the hotel, trying desperately to stay awake 'til its a reasonable hour to retire. Maybe we'll go for a walk. Wait! That's what we spent all day doing!

Banff Sightseeing

Yesterday after the conference ended we switched hotels and then drove up to the Banff Upper Hot Springs. A 1920s era building is there, fairly recently renovated, which houses changing rooms, a gift shop and café. The springs feed into a large, shallow pool with benches around the outside edge and a very shallow kiddie area to one side. The water is at 39C, so plenty warm, but not scalding. There is of course a beautiful view of the mountains poolside. We had actually intended to go for a walk first, but we couldn’t find the trail we were thinking of taking and decided it must start further down the mountain. I’m sure Jake was especially disappointed at not getting to see the rare Banff snails!

Today we drove north from Banff further into the park. First stop was Johnson Canyon. A fast running stream runs down the narrow canyon through limestone rock. The sides are carpeted in thick moss with a canopy of tall, dark evergreens. In the moss are many little plants, but it was too early for much of anything to be blooming. There were leaves of plants at least related to bunchberry, Pyrola, and an orchid. The only flower was that of a single anemone. You follow the canyon up along a paved path and catwalks (bottom photo) that are anchored into the sides of the canyon. There are 2 major areas of waterfalls, both of which you can get quite close too. We continued past the paved paths to the Inkpots (top photo), several spring-fed pools that vary in blue-green shades of color. You can see the fine silt at the bottom bubble up as the water comes through. A pebble beach along the river provided a nice place to sit and have a snack and look at all the different kinds of rocks – granite, quartz, sandstone and many that I don’t know.

Every day here has been gorgeous with blue skies much of the day and temperatures in the mid-60s. I gather that we really lucked out since it is usually rainier and colder this time of year.
Continuing on, we drove another 27 km up to Lake Louise (3rd photo), a lake in a truly spectacular setting. You can see a finger of the Victoria Glacier between mountains as well as thick snow on the peaks. We had lunch at the Fairmount Hotel, a very grand hotel at one end of the lake (see photo). It was built by the Canadian railway originally to attract wealthy customers. The lake itself has blue-green waters (4th photo), although it was mostly covered with ice still. We sat in the Lakeview Lounge for our lunch and I cannot think of a place with a better view! I tried an antipasto platter that included an aged gouda that had Sylvan in the name – couldn’t pass that up!

To back up a couple days, the conference field trip was on Wednesday. The first stop really was a gravel pit, used by the park for road maintenance. Much of the gravel comes from deposits near the road that wash down from the mountains. We saw a few elk, and lots of elk droppings. The elk are not looking their best this time of year – kind of scrawny after a long winter and losing their winter fur in clumps. We didn’t actually see many weeds since most of them aren’t up yet. We visited a couple restoration sites and heard several presentations during a lunch at the Nordic ski center where the Nordic skiing was held during the Calgary winter Olympics. That area had been mined for coal many years ago and some of the invasive plants included tansy and rhubarb from the miner’s gardens.

Friday’s talks included several by MD people! Lewis Ziska from Beltsville spoke on weeds and global climate change – great speaker. Al Tasker from APHIS spoke too about Early Detection and Rapid Response. It looks like the next WAB conference may be held on the east coast in 2010.

Tomorrow night we fly to Belgium, so it will be a few days before the next post probably.

Banff - First Day

We took off for Banff with no problems, but by the time we reached the halfway point in Chicago, Jake had completely succumbed to a severe stomach flu and exited the plane just before it took off to Banff. For once the airline was very helpful and arranged for a new ticket to fly out the next morning and a hotel room. I got to Banff and figured out how to make a phone call on a pay phone (how long has it been since I used one of those?! They take credit cards now though) so I could make sure I hadn’t abandoned Jake to some horrible fate in Chicago. The Airporter van ride to Banff is kind of hazy since it was getting close to midnight east coast time. I do remember waking up to be suddenly surrounded by snow-capped mountains highlighted by the setting sun though!
Things looked brighter this morning with the sun shining again, Jake at the airport on his way here and the start of the Weeds Across Borders conference. The talks at the conference were eclectic ranging from the effectiveness of sheep grazing on invasive plants to using genetic computer simulations to predict species invasion patterns. There was also a very educational and humorous one hour talk on using the web for plant id. Rather than having to go through a dichotomous key, you are able to use a web program to enter whatever relevant information you have – flower color, leaf shape, habitat, to narrow down the possible species. You don’t even have to know any botanical terms since there are pictures illustrating possible choices. If you’re not sure whether a leaf is lobed or toothed you can also choose both. Wouldn’t it be great to have a web key to plants of the Delmarva coastal plain?!
My presentation on Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants went well I think, or at least Jake and a few other people said so. The paper is finished too, so most of the work is done now! Tomorrow is a field trip to - a gravel pit!

More Than a Hectic Last Morning

Sylvan observes that we departed after a hectic last morning of packing. It seems to me a busy two years of working overtime mixed with great anticipation of adventures to come. Our first day was filled with milestones: leaving DC and Maryland and much of our overabundance of material possessions behind (got to lighten that load!). Now stopping at Syracuse, the jumping off point before heading to Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France during the next three weeks (like resting in Tierra del Fuego before heading to Antartica). Looks like we going to be eating enough good food here to require an extra couple of seats on the plane -- oh, the carbon footprint we will be leaving!

Away at last!

After a rushed morning of final house cleaning and attempting to load the car with our remaining belongings, we set forth for Syracuse, NY on Saturday. There was just enough space behind the driver's seat for Calla, the dog, to curl up on her pillow and no view out the back window. It was a gorgeous Saturday morning and the ride was passed pleasantly and uneventfully. No highway construction since it is Memorial Day weekend!

We got to Syracuse a little after 4pm in time for my mom and me and Calla to take a nice walk around my old high school, just down the street from my parent's house. Tess, their dog, has gotten too old to walk more than a very short ways, but Calla seemed to remember the route. Both dogs seem to remember each other and have their respective pillows set up in the kitchen in front of the fireplace.

This morning we walked around Green Lakes, a state park nearby that features a meromictic lake - a lake deep enough that the water at the bottom never mixes. This is the same kind of lake as the one in Africa that turned over suddenly releasing a cloud of carbon dioxide that killed 1700 people people around the lake. Green Lake seemed quite peaceful as usual and beautiful with its aqua green color and exceptionally clear waters. The slopes around the lake are covered with many ferns including maidenhair and cinnamon fern and spring flowers like foamflower and miterwort were in bloom. I've been walking around Green Lakes ever since I was in high school, and unfortunately the edges of the paths are increasingly home to black swallowort and garlic mustard. This is also one of the few places where common barberry still grows and its yellow flowers are now in bloom.