Rocky Mountains - 5 Animals

Well, I'm really slack.

To distract you from that fact, heres five pretty pictures!

Rabid Attack Squirrel #148

A very vain Hoary Marmot

Yep... more squirrels. Bears! I mean bears.

Elli took this... I gotta say, pretty damn nice photo.

Okay, not exactly native, but... HORTHIEEEETH!

All up, we spent about two weeks driving through Banff and Jasper National Parks, and the Okanagan Valley. The Rocky Mountains really have to be seen to do them any kind of justice - paltry English tarnishes their grandeur, like trying to build a mighty ship using only barnacles.

We spent our time in an RV (yeah yeah, I know) with Elli's parents. Jane took us white-water rafting, while Angus led us on a seven-hour horse back ride to Lake Agnes (in the mountains above Lake Louise). We also did a spot of kayaking and hiking - including on a glacial moraine!

In the Okanagan Valley we went sailing and visited Canada's only desert, which was eerily like the Australian outback - it was even 40 degrees! Most welcome after the cold and rainy mountains.

Eventually we dropped the RV in Vancouver and explored a little bit, before heading over to Vancouver Island to stay with one of Jane's friends and her family. They were lovely and had a gorgeous house, and a yacht which they took us sailing on. We sailed out to a happy friendly island named Pirates Cove, whose claim to fame was that it once hosted an Armageddon cult, which blew itself up with dynamite when the police got too close.

We also took a day to explore Victoria, which seemed like a pretty nice place; except for a horrible, bad, horrible bus tour that we took that made me want to jump into traffic. After that, we skillfully missed seeing Ley before saying goodbye to Elli's parents and heading to a small, third world country with the unlikely name of "America".

Tune in for our adventures next time... IF YOU DARE!