stubsadventures

Driving the Icefields Parkway from Banff to Jasper has to be one of the most beautiful drives in the world and for someone like me who loves glaciers, you get your fill on this drive. The conditions are never great on this highway in the winter time but if you go slow and enjoy the views, it’s usually manageable.

I arrived in Jasper and was excited to stay at the Fairmont Jasper Lodge. The Fairmont’s are known world wide as some of the most luxurious hotels around, the service and beauty of the hotels never disappoint.  In Banff, the Fairmont is basically a castle that you could spend days walking around and see not see everything. The detail and the size of the building is out of a fairy tale. The Jasper Lodge on the other hand, is just many different shapes and sizes of cabins spread out between lakes and rivers in a part of Jasper away from the little town. The elk roam the grounds and the food is amazing.

Managed to squeeze in a hike in Maligne Canyon. This steep canyon carved by the river is beautiful in the summer time and a death defying hike in the winter. The normally well groomed path that takes you up and down the canyon, over bridges is ice slicked and steep. All the stairs are snowed over and if it weren’t for the railings, I would have been a goner more than once.

Stubs

For me, as always, this year was filled with peaks and valleys. To remember a year properly, you have to remember them both. The low points make you appreciate when it’s good and when it’s good, we have to realize how lucky we are.  If no one else, this is for me… as the blog was always intended. A year look back, in no particular order of the crazy events of my life in 2012:

1.  I turned 30 on New Years Eve of 2011 with two of my best friends, at one of my favorite places in the world in Sooke, BC
2. Made it home to NS to build a beautiful retaining wall and landscape at the cottage
3. Got to meet several new very cute babies this year
4. Was in Toronto twice, visiting my family there and watching my cousin navigate his new life after a spinal injury
5. Experienced the raw beauty of Iceland and everything it and its amazing people have to offer
6. Got my motorcycle license
7. Gave a speech in front of more than 1,000 people
8. Went to Tofino, BC for the first time
9. Learned how to snowboard (losely use the word learned)
10. Experienced my first work place fatality
11. Baked banana bread for the first time
12. Did the coldest dive of my life during my dry suit certification at 1c bottom temp
13. Crossed the Arctic Circle for the second time to see one of the most amazing puffin colonies up close
14. Moved from Drumheller, my home of almost three years
15. Survived another harsh northern winter working by Conklin, AB and seeing -40 temps more than a few times
16. Visited Niagara Falls for the second time
17. Encountered “Europe’s Most Powerful Waterall” in Iceland
18. Ate lamb for the first time
19. Purchased my dream home in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains
20. My first year boarding, I went to three different mountains in a month
21. Hugged on of BC’s Canada’s trees on Vancouver Island
22. Went to Cape Breton to visit my grandparents and stayed in a new part of Cape Breton Island
23. Painted (with help) the entire main area and two rooms in my new house
24. Rang in the end of the year on Galiano Island, BC
25. Came two feet away from an enormous black bear in EC Manning Provincial Park, BC
26. Saw humpback whales in Iceland
27. Canoed a ton: down the Red Deer River, though Canadian Badlands, in the mountains a couple of times, on the west coast, in the ocean.
28. Kayaked three times in the majestic Christina Lake, Alberta
29. Spent a week getting all my recertifications for work: H2S Alive, First Aid, Confined Space Entry, blah blah blah
30. Drove to Saskatchewan to check out a ghost town
31. Poncho came to visit twice
32. I started blogging

Stubs