Visiting Aunt Ivy in Calgary

On Monday morning, we flew to Calgary to visit Aunt Ivy for a few days. We spent the rest of the day relaxing with Aunt I. In the evening, we caught up with some cousins who happened to be spending the month in Calgary.

Today, we got up early so we could make a trip into the mountains. We decided on a hiking trail, loaded up Aunt I’s Honda, and headed out. Although the guide warned us that getting to the trailhead might be a challenge, we decided to try it anyway. After doing some off-roading with the Honda, we came up to a rocky riverbed and we realized we had driven about as far as we could go.

The next challenge was finding the trailhead on foot. We walked around for about a half hour before we came across a horse trail. It was the most promising trail we had come across, so we decided to follow it.

About an hour later, we discovered why the horse trail was so well worn; apparently, it is used regularly enough by an outfitting company for them to build a quasi-permanent camp complete with corrals and buildings in which to store extra hay. We decided to use one of their picnic tables to have lunch.

After lunch, we decided to backtrack and see if we could find the trail we had come to hike; the guidebook had said something about some lakes and some interesting rock formations, none of which he had yet come across. Finally, after wandering about in the woods for about 3 hours, we came across the sign indicating the trail we were looking for. Hurray! We decided we still had enough energy to follow the trail to the first of the lakes it was supposed to take us too. After hiking another half hour, the trail disappeared under a giant puddle of water. We gave up and headed back to our vehicle. Even though we didn’t see the things we set out to see, we decided that our afternoon had been well-spent. It would have been criminal to complain after spending a few hours looking at views like the one below.