Monday, August 19, 2013

Where Everywhere You Look is a Postcard {Part I}

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Hey there readers! I have so much I want to show you and tell you about our trip. It felt soooo good to be traveling again {for fun!}. You may want to just hang out and stay awhile today... You can view the first post about our trip HERE.

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 The title of this post pretty much sums up how I felt about the area... I mean, after about 1000 photos (no, I'm not exaggerating) I finally just gave up and accepted the fact that everything I laid my eyes on was worthy of a postcard and I may as well look with my own eyes instead of a camera lens. 

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One of my dreams has always been to see the Canadian Rockies. While I loooove our Rocky Mountains and have even lived in them, the Canadian Rockies have always seemed so huge and rugged. When I was little, my mom and dad had a very similar version of the picture below hanging in our living room from when they came after they got married... I would always look at that picture and think, "Someday, I want to go THERE."

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We went on several hikes exploring the mountains and my favorite hike was to the top of Sulfur Mountain. We were up so high that instead of looking up at the mountains around us, we were looking right at the mountains surrounding us. It was awe inspiring to say the least. And just so you know, pictures do not begin to do these views justice. We saw the Bow River winding down the valley, alpine lakes in the distance, the town of Banff and the beautiful Banff Springs Hotel.

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{and to my pleasant surprise, they served icees on the top... just what we needed after that hike... as you can see, we went up a good ways in elevation!}

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There was a gondola going up and down the mountain (for a pretty penny) but we (Aaron, his dad, and I) decided to get the full experience of working our way to the top... In my (and their) opinion, we appreciated those views from every level of the mountain because they just kept getting more and more magnificent the higher up we climbed.

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I will show and tell you more about Banff in the next post. Calgary was beautiful in a totally different way... There were green rolling hills with the mountains in the background... all ranches and farmland. It reminded us of Montana and at times, Oregon.

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Aaron was in heaven seeing so many deer just "out and about"...

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... and the prairie dogs cracked me up... you would just see all of these little heads randomly poke up from the grass and then disappear in an instant!

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And the chipmunks were maniacs!

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... and rather "plump" from tourists like us.

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Well, I hope you had good internet connection viewing all of these pictures today... I will be back soon with more.

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Stay tuned!

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