Our Montana Life: Banff/Jasper continued!

Sorry it's been a while again since I've posted. I've been working hard. Both at home and work. I have some top secret stuff that I'm working on at home, but the fun part I can share is that Erik and I closer and closer to being on the "ready and waiting" adoption list. We've recently gone through our homestudy and now will be awaiting some final paperwork items. While we've been waiting we've also been doing lots of good research on strollers and car seats! Fun stuff I'll tell you. I'm appreciative of the wide range of the internet for research purposes. It sure does get you to lots of info, almost too much!
So backing up to August and our Banff and Jasper trip. We had to make some changes to our very loose itinary due to weather. The third day we woke up and did an early hike on one of the most popular trails in the parks: Johnston Canyon. It's an easy short hike up a steep walled canyon with good views of some waterfalls. We went all the way up to some ink pots about 5 miles or so from the trailhead. Here's just a couple pics from the hike.
Here's me in front of Lower Falls:

Here's Upper Falls:

Here we are in the valley by the ink pots: (no pictures of the ink pots, they didn't turn out so good. )

Here's a view of the walkway clinging to the canyon wall. Not scary because it wasn't that high up.

Then we headed up to Lake Louise area and it rained and rained. Luckily they have kitchen shelters at the campsites becuase we hung out there all evening with a family from Winnepeg and one from Germany. The next morning it was still raining. So I couldn't do the one thing I wanted to do besides hike, and that was canoe on Morraine Lake. Here I am enjoying the pouring rain!

So we asked at the visitors center about the weather and they said it was a good day to drive north and go on the Icefields Parkway. Check out the website for specific info and great pictures. Our pics are good BUT it was a partly sunny/partly cloudy day so it made for lots of lighting issues. Here's some of the better pictures from our drive up. We drove most of the day and stopped when we wanted to. All of these pictures are taken from the side of the road literally, you didn't have to go on a hike to see glaciers, lakes and huge peaks!
Tonya in frint of Waterfowl Lake, not sure the names of all the peaks in the background.

We did stop to hike, of course. WE hiked up Wilcox Ridge to have a birds eye view of Athabasca Glacier which is part of the Columbia Icefield. It's huge and amazing!!

Here's Erik on the ridge when we popped out of the trees. You can see the small glacier (forgetting the name) and then down in the valley that's the road we were traveling on!