On this day, we took another gondola ride up to the ski resort area above Lake Louise. Here's a giant 360-degree panorama from up there.
Cassie (L) and Tycho (R) play on the viewing platform.
Tycho.
Trying to get in another shot as quickly as I can before he gets the binky back in!
Me with Lake Louise in the background.
Cassie smiles for the camera, but she's looking right in the Sun . . .
Great picture of Gwen, with Grandma and Grandpa leading Cassie away in the background.
Zoom picture of Lake Louise, across the valley, with giant hotel at the near end.
Gwen and Jason with Lake Louise in the background, out of focus (forgot to set the F-stop high for this one).
Here's Cassie with the bear -- well, as close as she would get. She was too scared to get any closer to the rope than this, so I had to back up and use the zoom to make it look like she was closer to the bear. Those bears are scary if you're just 20 months old!
Unless, of course, you're Tycho, in which case you are unfazed. Here's Tycho in front of a Grizzly Bear in the museum at the top of the gondola.
Cassie found this 2-dimensional bear less intimidating, and posed for pictures with it.
A broader view down into the little burg of Lake Louise.
Looking northwest from the overlook, into Yoho National Park.
We took a guided trip out onto Athabasca Glacier from the Glacier View Inn at the south end of Jasper National Park. Here's the view from out on the glacier, looking up to the icefall (like a waterfall for glaciers).
Tycho must be thinking -- but this is just like our front yard in December!
Self-shot of me and the upper end of the glacier.
Here's the safe area, the place that they've ascertained is free of crevasses. That's why it was worth it to go on this tour; no need to die from hypothermia with a broken body at the bottom of a crevasse.
This is the superbus -- 'snobus' -- that we rode in. Only goes 12 miles an hour, but can climb up an 18 degree incline on ice! Those tires are massive. See at right Tycho leading Gwen back to the bus.
Here's Cassie out on the ice.
Cassie waves to the camera with Grandma.
Cassie in front of the upper glacier.
Cassie with Grandma and Grandpa.
Gwen, Tycho, Jason, and Cassie at the Athabasca Glacier.
Tycho was a bit upset while we were out on the glacier. We eventually determined that it wasn't that he didn't like the glacier -- its that he couldn't stand being ripped away from the bus.
The dude REALLY likes buses. I can't imagine from whence he got the genes to be so OCD . . . Gwen bought him a model of the bus at the gift shop and now it's become one of his most prized posessions. He now sleeps with his Doggie in one hand and his Bus in the other!
HEre's a fast-running flow of glacial meltwater.
Our tour group out on the ice.
Looking down the glacier.