Don’t take your good health, your ability and your youth for granted. Don’t take the little things in life for granted. Get out there, explore, meet people, make connections and appreciate everything around you, because life is so fleeting and when it’s all said and done you’ll want to be able to say that you lived it to its fullest.
But my experience in the Rockies taught me to make the most out of my travels, to get off the beaten path and to say yes. To say yes to crazy, unexpected and impulsive ideas and suggestions. Because in the end it’s always worth it.
It’d been a while. Several years. The last memory I had of this place was of being a child, and looking out from the back seat window, in awe, at the mountains rising up above me. Face pressed to the glass, transfixed to the beauty of the natural scenes around me. I must have been six, if not younger. At least eighteen years later, I found myself back.
People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy
– Anton Chekhov
After a day spent at Lake Louise with our friends, we decided to make the breathtaking drive up north to Jasper via the Icefields Parkway. If you ever find yourself in the Canadian Rockies with the opportunity to make the drive up to Jasper from Banff, DO IT!
Yosemite Valley felt completely out of this world. It’s hard to describe how I felt when I was walking through those meadows. I think the best words to describe it are surreal and ethereal. It honestly seemed like I was dreaming.
Yosemite has my heart. There’s still so much left for me to see, and so many places to go, but I know, for the rest of my life, it will be one of the places I will always be drawn to.
I’ll remember this day for the rest of my life. We woke up that morning finally deciding to tackle Rundle, as the weather had been an issue before. With the previous day’s adventures in Yoho under our belt, we felt confident to make the ascent up this peak. One of our goals during this trip was to summit a peak, so Rundle it was.
This is a fairly well known and short, but beautiful hike with a spectacular destination at the end. The round trip distance is about 3km from the trailhead at the O’brien parking lot
Whenever I took a break from scrambling up, I would turn around, take a seat and marvel at how high we had gone. What lay before us was a seemingly endless sea of evergreens, with majestic mountains breaking through and soaring high above. The sun’s last rays of the day shone brilliantly on Mt. Stephen across from us, as golden hour was in full effect.