It was a beautiful day last Saturday and Bonnie and her parents had all left the house in Cochrane to do various things, so I milled around a little bit and then decided to take off for Banff. Since I was in no hurry and it was, as I said, gorgeous outside (about 15 degrees and mostly sunny), I decided to take the old Bow Valley Trail back to Banff instead of Highway 1 (trans Canada). It was definitely beautiful and amazed me how much seeing the same mountains from different angles so changes their appreance.

The road winds out of Cochrane and through the "Old West" for a while, before heading through the Indian reservation. There are no shoulders, to speak of, for almost all of the drive, so all of these photos are taken by just blind point-and-click out the window as I drove. I think they mostly turned out rather well. Here we are then, the inaugural pictures from my new camera!

Leaving: Cochrane. Entering: The Wild West


There are some horses at the far side of this little lake


Mt. Yamnuska in the very first range


More of Ol' Yam


Don't know the name of this one, unforutnately.


Sort of make you feel 19th century, doesn't it?


This happens more often than I can describe. Thought I'd try for a picture this time


Another mountain of which I don't know the name


I was trying to shoot something else and ended up with this. For some reason, I like it


These next couple are mountains across Lac Des Arc, which is much nicer from this side when your view isn't marred by the cement plants.


This one is back east, out of the mountains


The 3rd sister never gets any credit. I thought this was a unique, rarely phootgraphed view of a commonly pictured mountain.



SO what else is going on? The usual. It is definitely spring - haven't skiid in a couple of weeks at this point; my thoughts are turning to climbing and hiking as they did last year at about this time. The warm weather is just intoxicating.

This week we're getting the closest thing Banff gets to spring - couple days of cool rain. It's actually been nice; we haven't seen rain in about 6 months, believe it or not. The smell here is simply amazing too.

So a couple more shots. The first is of Cascade Falls. It's a waterfall fed high up by a natural spring that only recently has started running again. I pulled off to try to get a quick shot of it


And finally, the ol' home with my new toys. That huge TV and monitor. The computer is brand new too but you can't tell because, well, it's a picture of a computer tower.



And finally, I'll leave you with this. I put my back against the window in the picture above and took a shot. You've seen it before, but I think it's worth putting out there often. This is what we get every day :p I did about an hour of yard work since taking this photo and it looks great out there now - all raked and swept. Only in Banff do you rake about as many deer pellets as you do leaves of dead grass.