Road trip - Waterton National Park, 2.5hrs north of Calgary.
Taking a break before Dean has to go back to work, and I am flying off to Poland to meet my new precious grandbaby: Percy! 🥰
Stayed in a hotel which was built in 1927, and has been kept basically in the spirit of the time it was first built since then.
It contains the oldest still working lift in North America. A lift was needed to carry any visitors up the 18.5m floor to ceiling building. The lift only goes from floor 2 to 4, so if you are staying on the 5th floor (as we were) you must use the stairs for the remaining flight. We chose to use the stairs for all flights during our visit, but for the first time up.
The room was VERY bare - even more so because of COVID19. Due to the pandemic, they removed all decorative touches including pens/paper, extra pillows or chairs. The cleaning services have also been altered so you only receive a clean or touch-up if you request it.
The room was fine; very clean and quaint. Waterton tends to be a fairly windy location, so keeping in mind the age of the building, you can imagine how noisy the room was; had to prop the chair into the door so it would stop smacking! Made for a rather sleepless first night.
The view from our room, looking down onto the lake and out to between the mountains was phenomenal; so amazingly beautiful.
We walked down to the town and back again a couple of times - no small feat; but good and worth it. So many beautiful flowers/plants/critters to see!
⤶ Discovered and fell in love with the snowberry bush all over again *sigh (Symphoricarpos albus)
The harebell ⤷ flowers were just finishing up, but still very beautiful. (Campanula rotundifolia)
They are, apparently, trying to battle one of Alberta's listed noxious weed: the dreaded Creeping Bellflower. Good for them… they have missed a large number from what I saw - it will be long term continuous battle me thinks! 😧
As we were walking home from one trip to town, we stopped and sat on a bench beside the water. While we were resting, this little guy, a hover fly named Harveydett, came for a visit with me. She stayed for the entire rest time. So very cute!
Saw quite a few wild Saskatoon bushes, (but only one, perfectly ripe, berry to pop into my mouth) and quite a few Thimbleberry (Rubus odoratus); tasted this for the first time - was really yummy, looks almost like a rasberry, but very different leaves, and tastes completely not the same! Mmmmm. 😋
And now for a few random photos from our rather enjoyable trip.
Some of the beautiful things in our province. 😎
This is the view of our hotel from town.
A fire went through here a couple of years ago, September 2017, establishing itself in the park and in the end actually burned approximately 35,000 hectares (135 miles/217km, or 86,486.66 acres) 19,303 hectares were in the actual park! You can see where it was behind parts of the town, and in fact came right up to the water tower beside the hotel we stayed in. Scary stuff. 😧
It was a nice break at a beautiful location. I do recommend going there, it is very pretty and if you are a hiker there are a lot of trails you can explore. Do not know if I would ever go back, been there now which is good enough. If I ever did go back I would definitely not stay at that hotel - too much money for a very old, (which is cool) hotel which is noisy (wind) and not so comfortable; but that is just my opinion, for what it is worth. 😉
No comments:
Post a Comment