Scenes from Yellowknife Bay, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

Daily commuters, Houseboats and kayaks in the bay.  I wonder how much the parking ticket will be?  Do they tow away?

Edith Cavell Meadows -Jasper National Park

We spent a weekend learning to photograph wild flowers with professional photographer Paul Gilbert earlier this summer at the Waterton Wildflower Festival in  Waterton National Park.  That has created an interest and new skills that have me exploring through the Rockies with a new view.  

Here are a few shots from the Mount Edith Cavell Meadows in Jasper National Park.  Don't be deceived by the term meadows, these are not flat by any means as you will see in some of this pictures. 

Marmots

We took a run out to Jasper National Park for the weekend and one of the spots we explored was Mount Edith Cavell, the Angel Glacier and the Edith Cavell Meadows. While climbing through the boulder jumble to get into the meadows, I came across this group of Marmots. They are about the size and build of a beaver and live in the higher altitudes of the mountains.

Another Early Morning

Staying on the early morning theme, I was once again out with the thermos of coffee in hand to catch this morning's fog. Taken at Hastings Lake just east of Edmonton, I waited in semi darkness with the sound of wings whistling around overhead but out of sight until I had enough light to capture these pelicans on a spit reaching out into the lake. Hastings Lake has a sizable pelican population and they are often seen in their serene glide and wave flight pattern. This group seemed content to sit out the fog.

Why I packed the alarm clock on vacation.

Why would anyone get up before 6am on their vacation? My answer lately has been "To catch the morning light".

When you're just days from the summer solstice, as we were in early June in Waterton National Park, that means getting up and rolling early. The sky just starts to show light about 5:45 and suddenly at 6 the sunlight is streaming across the prairie and straight in to the mountain valley. Luckily my wife shares my early morning obsessions some days and we were up and out chasing the first light.

Thank goodness we had prepared a thermos of coffee the night before!



Many balsamroot plants at the valley level had flowered in late May or early June and were starting to show to look pretty tattered by the time we were there in mid June. We were lucky to find this cluster in good condition and I wanted to shoot them from an angle other than our usual downward looking viewpoint. I was struck by the low angle sunlight striking these and had the advantage of both a mountain ridge and a glorious blue sky as a backdrop.