Banff pictures

If I'm going to show you Banff, you need to see this li'l fella first! He was everywhere, posing professionally for everyone, although most people seemed to be following the "Do not feed the Animals" signs.

"Hello, my name is Chip and I'll be your guide today."

We stopped at the Takakkaw Falls on our way east. One gets to the falls via a narrow, switchback-filled road, and then a short walk through the woods.

It is really high!

The river rushing by me and Elaine:


Finally, we got to the big city of Banff. Thing number one: go up the gondola on Sulphur Mountain. You get a fun ride in an enclosed pod that whooshes up the mountainside, and a great view of the town and river valley. That little lump in the middle is called Tunnel Mountain (although it is more of a hill and there is no tunnel) and we hiked up it another day.



Millions of tourists, on the boardwalk. Major sites had these walkways all over, which protect the environment from being trampled, but sometimes they also made us feel like we were not entirely in control of things, but were being herded about. Ah well, we were being herded about, and if we want to see the same views as everyone else, at least something was being done about the impact of all of us in the same place!

The beautiful Mount Rundle, seen from the town.

Mount Rundle has to be one of the most photographed things in the universe. It is oriented almost north/south, so the light on it changes a lot during the day, and every moment the shadows are different. (I must note here that whoever is writing the Wikipedia pages about these mountains is mostly interested in scrambling up them, something which only vaguely occurs to me!)

A long view of the mountains to the west:

Do not feed the goats!

We didn't see any goats, nor bears, and the only elk we saw the whole darn time was nibbling flowers in a parking lot in town.

We thought we would just stroll up Tunnel Mountain one morning.

It had been cold in the night and some of the high mountains around had a dusting of snow!


We managed to get up to the top without weather doing much to stop us, though we learned that what climbers call "easy" and what we think of as easy are two quite different things!

We were, of course, rewarded with more spectacular views, and only got a tiny sprinkle of rain as the cloud cover passed over us. It was the only less-than-perfect weather we had the whole time!


Mount Rundle from Tunnel Mountain:

Another expedition (I'm all out of chronological order, I think, but that's not too important, since we're just talking about a few days) was to Moraine Lake and Lake Louise.

From the Rockpile at the end of the lake. The water really is the most amazing colour, and the whole site was pretty un-crowded, as these things go.

We rented a canoe! Elaine had had a week of boating camp and so paddled with gusto!




The glacier peeking around the, um, peaks!


And here I will throw in some pictures of lichen. I think that the top one is by Stephen, and taken at Two Jack Lake (which we'll get to shortly) and the second one is one I took at Moraine Lake while waiting for the kids to get back from the top of the Rockpile. They had gone up the side of it, instead of by the path, and, sorry, but Mommy was just not going to do that!

This required a bit of fiddling to make it presentable, and I think it's best appreciated as a colour study, rather than as a photo of anything!


We left Moraine Lake and went down the road to Lake Louise.


Certainly beautiful, and because it's been a tourist attraction for a hundred years, it's pretty darn accessible. As you can see here, the weather was turning a bit grey. I'm glad we had seen Moraine Lake in the sunshine!


On our last morning, we passed by Two Jack Lake for a little picnic and last photo-op before driving to Calgary to fly home. I think I camped here with my family in 1967. More digging in family archives might produce similar pictures! But not right now....

Moving along

Let's see, after Penticton we drove to Castlegar, where my parents live. My mom just had her 90th birthday this summer!

I had heard that she had a pair of socks that needed mending. I'd made these socks in 2006 (when the kids were so much smaller!) and I knew I didn't have any of the original yarn left, so I took with me a small bit of some similar colour.


Well. I'm going to need more than a small bit for this! They don't so much need darning, as reknitting! The toes have already been darned several times, and the holes just became too much to deal with!

I did just give my mom a new pair of socks for her birthday, but I hope that before Christmas I will rip these back to the "good" part and reknit the toes ... in completely different yarn! Make do and mend.

I did leave a knitted object with my parents. I had made a birthday dishcloth for my nephew, but he is one of the few relatives we didn't manage to hook up with on this jaunt. I was at my parents' place and noticed that the rag they were using was kinda tatty looking. I know I have given them dishrags recently, but didn't know where to look for them, and so just gave them Geoff's cloth! He's gone without birthday gifts from me for probably his whole life, so I'm sure he'll forgive me!

After a few days of hanging around, throwing rocks in the river and chit chatting, we left and continued eastward. First stop was lunchtime in Kaslo.

We then took the road that goes up beside the Arrow Lakes. The road changes sides of the water at one point, and everyone takes the little ferry across and continues on their way.

I believe it was on our way to this ferry that we had an adventure that went unphotographed! How the heck am I supposed to keep things straight?

Anyways, we were driving along, and came to a place where the traffic was stopped and guys in lumo vests and hard hats were standing around. It appeared that they were supposed to be installing a pipe in a ditch, but the digger had backed up into a power pole, causing sparks and "confusion and delay," as the Fat Controller would say. (That site is not as family-friendly as one might expect, sorry!)

So rather than sit in a line of cars waiting for the Hydro truck to come and sort things out, we turned around to a picnic spot we had just passed, at Summit Lake. In the parking lot we noticed a wee little toad. And when we got to the lakeshore, we realised the place was crawling (hopping!) with Western toads! They hopped out of our way as we walked along the beach. Very cool, and impossible to photograph -- grey toads on sand, and moving targets, at that!

We meant to go all the way to Banff in one day, but it would have meant a very long chunk of driving, so we split the journey and spent a night in Revelstoke. It was the first time on the trip that we just sauntered across the Trans-Canada Highway to find dinner. Funny, in Toronto a highway is huge, but in much of Canada, the highway is just the road through town.

Now, lemme tell you about vehicles. Here in Toronto, the guys who want to impress with their manliness (and money) drive Range Rovers and Hummers and other SUV-like things. The real man in small-town BC drives an F-150 pickup -- maybe a Ram, but always a truck. Motorcycles are Harleys, ridden by the same guys who were riding them 40 years ago -- just that now they're 40 years older than when they started! I didn't manage to get a photo of any of them, but I can tell you that apparently leather chaps are the thing to wear on your motorbike these days.

But this is the kind of get-up that catches my eye. Beautiful dishwasher-green VW bus with Quebec plates, and the cool bike on a trailer at the back. The guy was wearing a hand-knitted cap, of course.

Oh, look, a butterfly.

Okay, so we get up next morning and really start up the mountains.

A robot photo, with the camera sitting in the grass! This is at Field, which is on the highway just west of Banff National Park, with the illustrious Mount Stephen in the background. Guess why this is a family favourite! If I dug around here, I could show you pictures of Stephen in front of that mountain through the ages, starting in about 1965. After we took this he looked around a bit and decided that "usually" he stood in a slightly different spot!

Phew, we made it up Rogers Pass,

and time to stop for now! Next, really, Banff!

More holiday

I started sorting pictures and got a huge number to show you, and had only covered the first third of the holiday. Yikes! So, with minimal commentary, here we go!

Stop number one, Penticton, BC. We saw Grandma Dee, Auntie Mary, Auntie Nancy, Uncle Bot/Bub/Eric, Cousin Su, Uncle John, Auntie Sally, Auntie Sydney, Uncle Bruce.

Several of those people are here, tubing down the channel between the two lakes in Penticton.



Elaine wasn't keen about the whole idea, until she saw how it worked, so there was a second expedition the next day! Some lucky dude gets the job of driving the old school bus down to the stopping point, about an hour away by tube, throwing the tubes up on top and driving the slightly damp people back to the starting point. Many people have their own floating things (Jeez, floating sofa beds, some of them, complete with bar fridges) and so their fun is completely free. One can speed up or slow down a bit, with a lot of paddling, but basically you just go with the flow!

Long, long ago, Stephen had a job at the little college here, which was in a dumpy building behind this church. Now it has moved, but we had to go see the old landmark, and were rewarded with this sign. Why go to church? Well, we have short sermons and air conditioning!


On the beach is the peach! Apparently the original old peach was rolled into the lake one night when the town got too exciting, after an MC Hammer show! Lucky for us they built a new one, and they serve delicious peach drink.

Above the town is Munson Mountain, where you get a great view over the northern lake and the town. On the side of the mountain is the word "Penticton" spelled out in white stones. Hollywood of the north... Kind of dry, isn't it?


One day we took a ride on the Kettle Valley railroad. We always like a good steam train, but this time we got a full-size locomotive, which was quite a treat!


Vineyards seen from the train. This whole area has traditionally grown loads of fruit: apples, peaches, plums, cherries, pears... anything! But it seems that lately grapes have taken over, and the place is full of vineyards and wineries. This is fine, but really, an apple is often more useful than a bottle of wine, and who knows how the economics of this will all work out!

After the train ride, we stopped off at the Dirty Laundry, and liked their story, their graphics and their wine.

The name comes from local history: there was a laundry in town whose owner decided the guys working on the railroad needed a little entertainment, so he opened a brothel upstairs in the same building. Har har. It gives them a reason for calling their wine lots of suggestive names and putting little Mae West quotes on their ads.

This is a bottle of their Bordello wine. It comes with a magnifying glass so you can inspect the details of the "wallpaper" label! Award-winning design, apparently, as well as wine. We are hoarding this for a while, so I can't tell you much about the wine, except that when we tasted it we liked it enough to shell out the bucks for it.

And now some arty shots of rust!

An old tractor seat.

A coil of metal, and some moss, and some spikes and shadows...

I was lucky enough to find a big old boiler with a brand name on it that included all our initials. I'm not sure what to do with our rusty letters, but here is mine!

As we left Penticton and headed east, we left the dry landscape and got more greenery, more pines, more ranching.

We arrived in Castlegar, where we saw Auntie Diane, Uncle Rolf, Grandma Betty, Grandpa Jan!


Stay tuned! I'm not sure how many pics of stop two I have, but stop three was Banff, and we found it necessary to take a picture of every dang mountain!

Just flew in from Calgary, and, boy, are my arms tired

A knitted mitered square at Lake Louise! I didn't get much knitting done, really, but we had a great time, with pretty darn perfect weather. We have buckets of pictures to sort and get up here.

Here are some of the methods of transportation we used on this trip: plane, car, steam train -- with full-size locomotive! -- floating inner tube, gondola, go-kart, canoe, ferry and occasionally even our own feet! I hope to get you a bit more in-depth reporting in a day or two!

See you in September

I should be back for the start of school!



We've got to find other travel destinations -- going west always means getting a plane at the crack of dawn. Coffee, then a cab to the airport.

But I'll be baaaaaack!

Dyeing in the kitchen

Yesterday I took Elaine, some white wool and a few packets of Kool-Aid to Madeleine's house. She also had some Kool-Aid, the imported stuff from the States, like lemonade and black cherry! The black cherry makes a deeper, purply red, and the lemonade is a very delicate yellow. We added yellow food colouring to boost it!

We had thought of just putting the wool in the jars, but that turkey baster is so appealing! I don't have pictures of all the yarn, but this turned out pretty darn red, with, I believe, cherry and black cherry.



This next was one of Elaine's skeins. She likes to leave lots of white, but I think this did get a bit more colour as time went on. I will encourage her to bring some knitting on the holiday, but that doesn't necessarily mean much!



Ah, and this is what the girls really wanted to do!



This morning we have the skein:


Wound into a ball:


And her bigger skein, still drying a bit:

Planning the next trip

Next week we are off to see relatives and mountains in BC. This time we are not just sitting in one place, but going to three different hotels in three different towns. That means: a plane ride there, 2 long car trips and a plane ride back! Not to mention those evenings sitting around with jigsaw puzzles or Scrabble (mind you, I don't tend to knit while playing Scrabble, since it's such a cut-throat game).

I will take my pseudo-tiger sock. I am trying to get the heel sorted before getting on the plane, so I will really just have to knitknitknit and not think too much about it.

I will take the mitered cotton blanket. Small bits, easy knitting.

I hope to finish the last panel for the wool blanket before I go. Again we are up against the facts: it won't get done unless I pick it up and knit on it. Darn. It's sort of boring, and it's sort of fiddly -- I have to get the length right on this one! I shall exert myself.

And, because all that seemed so last week, I have devised a new project. Of course. I was rummaging in the wool bin upstairs, and realised I have loads of black and grey! I have 4 balls of black Creme, a wool/silk blend; 4 skeins of dark grey Cascade 220; a ball each of black and grey Paton's Classic; a ball of some black Misti alpaca I picked up at a swap! I also found a bit of beaded thread I came across at a destash sale.

Beaded thread and a strand of Creme

Toss all this around in the brain, with this shawl (on Ravelry)! For those of you who can't see that, I will try to describe it. It's several layers of shawl -- strips of edgings sort of attached across here and there, leafy motifs in various greens, various weights, all meant to capture a BC rainforest in knitting.


How about if I did that in blacks and greys? Sort of haunted house, Halloween, witchy? I hope it might look a bit medieval and Wise Woman-ish, but so far all I have is an unphotographable triangle. I am using a pattern called Faux Spanish Lace as my base.




Clearly the beads will run out shortly, but I will have a little excitement on the bottom point. We shall just have to see how it all works out, won't we?

Adventures in the air

We dashed off to visit the family of another of Elaine's friends this past weekend. They are the people we made the swingset with last summer (see the thrilling video here; I've had all of 91 views over the past year!). This year there were plans to strengthen the top bar of that, but mainly we enjoyed the sunshine and didn't do much work at all.

Spot the zucchini!

Let's get the knitting pictures out of the way first. Sitting in a car on the highway is certainly a good way to get knitting done.

The sock is ready for its heel! I'm not that impressed with the tigerishness of this yarn. It's fine, but it's not really tiger-stripes.

Two more miters for the cotton blanket got knitted on the way home last night. Now the whole thing looks like this:


I need to make the four corners, and five more pairs of miters. With a couple of trans-continental flights coming up, this should get done!

Chris, the friend's dad, is a pilot in his spare time, and managed to get hold of a small Cessna for the week! He took Stephen and Arthur up Saturday, in the clear blue sunshine, and Elaine, her friend, and me up Sunday, in overcast skies and threatening rain.

My darlings and a Cessna. This was just a quick trip out to the airfield to put some chocks on the wheels and tie the plane down.

Then we went for a little drive to see antique shops and such. This area of Dead People's Stuff was called Mantiques. Cute, eh? (I think Mantiques is an attempt to get people to stop thinking of antiques as "cute.")

I asked if they had any sock blockers, and they did have a few pairs of metal ones, but really, I don't block socks, and they were not that attractive, looking sort of like someone had twisted them up out of an old clothes hanger. A nice pair of maple wood ones, now that I might pay for!


I did find two little booklets of knitting patterns, published by the Red Cross and obviously distributed in the Yellow Pages! There are no pictures, and the yarn is called things like "Special Light Red Cross Service Yarn," but I might just try something out of one, just to see what happens. Who knows what the difference might be between a Quebec helmet and an Aero helmet?

Then it was time for the boys' fun. Arthur in the red, in the copilot's seat. Going up in this thing was described as flying in a VW Bug. Our pilot, following safety rules, told us not to worry if the door fell off -- we were only going up to about 1000 or 1200 feet, and it wouldn't be a problem.





Pretty spectacular! When the girls and I went up the next day, the shadows were less distinct, but the ground was just as clear. It really was a treat to get to do this!

An old door to end with, today.

No, wait, I'm back, a few hours later, to tell you that today is the centenary of Elizabeth Zimmermann's birth!


Where would we be without the Baby Surprise Jacket?!