Canada

Our trip started in Toronto, where due to a work conference we were able to get used to the timezone for about a week. Toronto itself is a large concrete city that didn't strike us as amazing. Though there are nice green areas and beautiful museums (we visited the Royal Ontario Museum and liked it), we didn't love it.

We were looking forward after a week of Toronto to head out to the nature Canada is famous for. After having visited the theme park / casino of Niagara Falls we flew out to Calgary. We rented a car and drove out to Banff.

On our first day of Banff we visited Moraine Lake and did a hike there. We arrived early to avoid the crowds and were pleasently surprised at how quiet it was once we went hiking. The longer distance hikes aren't frequently visisted, at least when we were there.

Making plenty of noise throughout our hike to avoid surprising any bears.

In this beautiful open spot there were lots of squirrels passing. We must have stumbled upon their highway network.

At this point it was getting later in the day but we decided to complete the hike by walking all up along the snowy ridge to the top left of the below photo, which gave a view over the valley behind.

The parks are well maintained and signed. With the vast space and dangerous wildlife you don't want to lose track.

A famous hike we did in Banff was The Big Beehive. Though it was raining for most of the time, the landscape was beautiful and well worth it.

This was a beautiful rest stop at a more flat long distance walk we did. Again in this spot it was very, very quiet. Along the entire trail we saw perhaps 6 people in total.

The Icefield Parkway towards Jasper National Park is an incredible drive with many viewpoints along the route.

In Jasper we saw our first bear. And excitingly enough it was on a trail: the valley of the five lakes. Before taking the below photo we had hiked around 2-4km or so from the parking lot in the rain. At a split in the route a couple walked back towards us and mentioned they had just saw a bear and went back to do the trail the other way around. We regrouped and looked at our map to make sure we could completely the trail by going the opposite direction. While we were looking down on our map we spotted a bear further ahead. It's tough to estimate distance or what kind of bear it was exactly. It just looked huge and stopped to look up briefly as it was walking past. Our hearts were beating fast!

While on a wildlife tour I took the below photo of a bald eagle.

Heading out of Jasper were surprised by winter weather in June. Although we had lost a day of being able to hike due to snow and road closures, we did get to experience driving the Icefield Parkway from Jasper to Banff in snowy conditions.

Once arrived at our next stop in Revelstoke, winter conditions hadn't yet passed us and on one of our hikes we couldn't reach the top as the surface was too slippery to be sure we could make it back in time. Underneath soft snow there was ice and progress was slow going up, let alone going down.

The most incredible lakes during our trip must've been these on the Eva and Miller Lake trail. The still lakes were mirroring the landscape beautifully.

After our last hike in Revelstoke it was time to drive back. A beautiful and easy drive all the way until Vancouver. Vancouver is a busy traffic-heavy city and luckily while we were there, it was amazing weather to visit. Cycling around Stanley Park, visiting Granville island in the absolute perfect conditions for it. With friends we went up to Cypress National Park to hike the famous Saint Marks Summit trail.

One day we'll be back to visit more of Jasper, Revelstoke and Vancouver Island.