Alberta’s badlands

Three years ago today we visited the badlands east of Drumheller, Alberta.

We stopped there once near the beginning of our trip, and now again near the end.

If you’re looking for a great place to visit, this it it.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Kananaskis Range

Mount Wintour

Three years ago today we spent time in the Kananaskis Range of the Canadian Rockies.

Opal Ridge, North Summit

Here are some of the majestic mountains we saw there. Thanks to Alberta Parks for identifying them.

Ribbon Peak

Lower Kananaskis Lake

Some happy aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) we saw along the way.

And here’s a relevant quotation for today:

• Where do the highest mountains come from? I once asked. Then I learned that they come from out of the sea. The evidence is inscribed in their stone and in the walls of their summits. It is from the deepest that the highest must come to its height. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Spracht Zarathustra (1883-91), Part III, Chapter 45. Translation by Graham Parkes, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2005) p. 132.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Smoke in the Canadian Rockies

When I look at my photo archive I’m impressed by how much we accomplished on this date in 2017, all of it accompanied by varying amounts of smoke from forest fires. The first picture shows a view along the Trans-Canada Highway as we drove east that morning from our hotel in Golden, British Columbia.

We continued on to two scenic and therefore much-visited lakes in Alberta’s Banff National Park. The photograph above shows Moraine Lake, with its richly colored water, later in the morning. The view below lets you see how sunshine radiated through the clouds and smoke over Lake Louise as dusk approached.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Dinosaur Provincial Park revisited

On this date three years ago we visited Dinosaur Provincial Park in the southern part of the Canadian province of Alberta. (Oh, if only we could travel again now!)

In today’s post you’re seeing some more views of that scenic place.

Below, how about what looks like a petrified whirlpool?

And speaking of the country that stretches across the top of the United States, here are two quotations by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield:

“You don’t sit around and not know stuff.”  “To me, science is just formalized curiosity.”

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Minimalist mountains and clouds

Here’s a different take on the Kananaskis Range of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada: a silhouetted view with graphic clouds beyond and above. The date was September 11, 2017.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Not humdrum

A year ago today we headed northeast from Calgary, driving almost two hours across the great Alberta prairie.

That was our third and last visit to the area around Drumheller.

We reconfirmed that the Canadian badlands near Drumheller are anything but humdrum.

©2018 Steven Schwartzman

The Kananaskis Range

A year ago today we drove through parts of the Kananaskis Range in Alberta. Though apparently not as well known as some other sections of the Canadian Rockies, the mountains in this range are massive, and it’s hard to convey their scale in photographs. With that caveat, here are four of the peaks I photographed that the staff at Alberta Parks could give me names for.

Cat’s Ears

Mount Lorette

Mount Blane

Mount Brock

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Athabasca Glacier

A year ago today we stopped along the Icefields Parkway to see the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, Alberta.

Plenty of ice and snow remained on the adjacent mountains as well, even at this warmest time of the year.

Below is a mostly downward look at how the moving Athabasca Glacier once scratched its way across a level expanse of upturned rock strata.

Near the scratched rocks I saw some low, fluffy mounds of what I take to be a species of Dryas, likely D. drummondii or D. octopetala. I learned that Dryas is in the rose family, and its seed heads are akin to those of its family mate Fallugia paradoxa, known as Apache plume.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

September 4, 2017

September 4, 2017, proved a long and adventuresome day in the Canadian Rockies. A couple of hours after heading north from Calgary we entered Banff National Park, where among intriguingly many other things I photographed the cloud-bannered fortress of rock shown in the first image. Call it Mount Rundle and you could be right.

Along the noisy edge of the Trans-Canada Highway I photographed some late-stage fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) divorced from its mountainy context.

By early afternoon we reached the famous Bow Lake.

At the far end of the day, as we headed east from Jasper to Hinton, I photographed burned trees with no water in sight.

Then, further along and with little daylight left, I found other trees not obviously charred but still seemingly dead that stood next to as much water as they could have wanted when alive. The way the water reflected the trees appealed to me.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Dinosaur Provincial Park

A year ago today we visited Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta.

Past posts about the place have shown strange cloud shadows in the sky and a panorama that includes a hoodoo with a head-like shadow.

Now you’re seeing some more views of that ruggedly scenic place.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman