Medicine Lake

And the story of my now fourth fall!

But first, the day started off with a late sleep in which was a huge mistake because the skies finally cleared and we got to see the mountains! But, I was up too late to capitalize on it like I should have. Oh well, can't change that now. Then we needed to locate a garage to see about diagnosing our vehicle woes and found out we would need to drive about 70 kilometers north to the nearest large town. We found a hotel that would let us use their internet access to get an address and phone number and in the process also found out that I had won the Woodland Park Zoo 2012 calendar photo contest! Great news, but I really needed to get my truck taken care of and the beauty of the morning light was quickly slipping away.

Found the address and off we went to Hinton. The Ford dealership there was simply wonderful and was able to diagnose the problems (at no charge mind you). Looks like we'll be lucky to limp home with this rig... only by the grace of God for sure! Clutch is toast and they are way too backlogged to fix it for us.

So off we went all the happier to at least know for sure what the problem was. Next stop... Miette Hotsprings to soak for a couple of hours. Ahhhh, that was great!

Back to Jasper and back to Maligne Lake Road to see about finding my girls. And as luck would have it I found them! Got more great shots, plus another photographer there got shots of them crowding around me sitting on the ground. Hopefully he'll actually email me some shots to share.

Then I got word of a black bear sow with two cubs up the road just a bit. The same ones I saw two nights before. Off we went and I found them. Mama bear was just a little too far into the woods to get some decent shots so I (stupidly) headed into the woods. I managed to get her attention and then she came after me! OH SH*T, RUN!!! So off I ran and managed to trip over my big fat feet and splayed myself all across the middle of the road, camera flying, stuff flying out of my vest, hat flung across the road. But, mama bear called off the attack.

Landed once again on the same hand and knee as I did in Oregon, this time I really opened up my knee. Had to remove my pants to keep the mess from sticking to everything. The good news is there was no equipment damage!

Not daunted by that, I managed to drive down the road about a mile to this spot to end the day photographing this sunset over Medicine Lake.

Wow, what a day! I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow will be like!

So if you're keeping score, this is now fall #4.

Cheers!
Jim