Montréal – Day Eight – I packed the night before, making for a speedy exit. As I left, I finally met Eli, my host at their wonderful place.
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Montréal – Day Eight – I packed the night before, making for a speedy exit. As I left, I finally met Eli, my host at their wonderful place.

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Montréal - Day Seven -
Montréal – Day Seven –
It’s my last real day in Montréal. I’ve managed to see and do most of the things I’ve wanted to, except visit Mont Royal. I dunno if I’d call it a mountain, really a massive hill… but I wanted to explore, go for a walk, listen to music (nope… haven’t had enough) and take in the view. I had breakfast at this little café, le Pomplemose, around the corner from my place. Delicious food, and THERE…
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Montréal – Day Six – One Day I Won’t Need Your Love… So I’m feeling a little a burnt out after Osheaga, I need a day to decompress. I plan on just taking it easy, and I plan on just doing some walking around to different neighbourhoods, people watching, taking in the sights.
Montréal - Day Five - For A Minute There… I Lost Myself
Montréal – Day Five – For A Minute There… I Lost Myself
It’s day five, I’m waking up in my Airbnb, and Radiohead! Yeah there’s some other decent bands today, but Radiohead! I could probably make a single post that band… maybe I will. This is pretty much the only thing I care about today. DAY THREE Borns St. Lucia Dilly Dally Grimes M83 Radiohead Dilly Dally – Just because my heart is clean… doesn’t mean it’s new… I was really looking forward to seeing…
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Montréal - Day Four - I Need You So Much Closer…
Montréal – Day Four – I Need You So Much Closer…
OKAY. DAY TWO. LET’S DO IT AGAIN. Once again caught the metro to Parc Jean Drapeau, luckily there’s a much smaller crowd coming in all at once. Maybe the lineup for today is a little weaker than the day before, maybe people are just a little less eager, maybe everyone is still sleeping off their hangovers. Wasn’t too keen on the first couple opening acts, so I took advantage of the lack of crowds…
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Montréal - Day Three - I’ll Believe In Anything
Montréal – Day Three – I’ll Believe In Anything
*The rest of my Montréal trip is being written from the plane, a lookback on the past few days. With the craziness of the festival, and wanting to do as much as I could, I didn’t have a chance to keep up. I wrote little sections as they happened, and filled it out after. OKAY OKAY OKAY. IT’S HERE! OSHEAGA. I’ve always wanted to vist Montréal, but the Osheaga Music and Arts festival was a huge…
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Montréal - Day Two - A Walking Tour?
Montréal – Day Two – A Walking Tour?
Day Two *This post is really picture heavy, as most of my day was spent walking around and… taking pictures, admiring the architecture. So, I’m not really big on doing touristy things and hitting up the major attractions. Travelling solo means I have no one to drag me to these things, which is probably bad. I spent most of the day walking around to the neighbourhoods I wanted to visit, and I’m…
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Day 1 – Montréal
Finally! The day is here!!!
I booked my trip to Montréal six months ago. I’ve always wanted to visit this city, and Osheaga music and arts festival happening this weekend is a bonus ( I GET TO SEE RADIOHEAD – I’m sure i’ll write all about that later). My bags are packed. And I’m finally leaving.
This is my first real solo trip that isn’t for work and I’m really excited. A few hours before my flight, I grabbed a car share to the train, then bussed the rest of the way the airport. For how crappy Edmontons public transit is, this went super smooth.
I breezed through security to find that my flight was delayed half an hour. Eventually we boarded the plane. The lady beside me was visibly uncomfortable, shaking. As soon as I sat down she asked me if I was a nervous flyer. I said not really. She said she was terrified, that she’d take drugs to calm herself down if she didn’t just throw them up after. She only cried twice the whole flight. We took off through some huge cloud formations, the turbulence was a bit much, but the view was beautiful. The rest of the flight was uneventful, and a few hours later, we landed on Montreal.
CAR SHARE! Definitely worth signing up.
Ready to go!
 Bye Alberta!
The clouds tho!
 The humidity!!! Omg. I waited about half an hour for the 747 bus to take me downtown, and then an hour on that bus. Then about 20 minutes of walking to my Airbnb, mostly because I got really confused on the metro and nearly went the wrong way.
Dragging my luggage down Sainte Catherine’s wasn’t a bad idea.
The people I’m renting the Airbnb from were away, but their daughter let me in and gave me a wonderful tour. The place is amazing… and air conditioned. Thank god. I could live here forever. Exposed brick.  The bathroom is wonderful. Much better than the sketchy hotel I booked originally a few blocks away, less expensive too!
Love
Love part deux
Unpacked and showered, I walked to Sainte Catherine for food and a beer. I heard that you don’t need to know much French to get by, as most people speak English too. Nonetheless, I’m a little intimated. With the amount of high school French I know, I may as well know none. I grab a slice of pizza at a pizza place on this corner, probably would have been better after a night out, then walk across the street for a pint. Yup, everyone I’ve met speaks English.
Shortly after, I hear this loud bang followed by a girl screaming. Initial reaction, oh no! Shots fired! But it was the fireworks! I forgot about the fireworks! I downed my beer, and ran a few blocks toward the sound and a spot where I could see them. What a welcome to the city! I’m already a little smitten!
Day two on the way…
It’s nice to welcome me, but this is a bit much!
Montréal – Day One – Finally! Day 1 - Montréal Finally! The day is here!!! I booked my trip to Montréal six months ago.
*Recommended Listening During Reading
Whitney – Light Upon the Lake – I played this album a few times during the trip, and while writing this post.
 Summer is rocketing by. It’s the end of July, and this is the time of year where I feel this last minute pressure to squeeze out every last drop of warm weather activities that I can.  Two weeks ago, Mike snagged the last reservable campsite at Wapiti in Jasper National Park for this weekend. Last minute camping gear additions were made, equipment and dog (Stryder) were piled into my Fiesta on Friday evening, and we made the drive out to the park after work. We got to the site just around 10 pm, with just enough time for a quick fire after the tent was setup.  My fire building skills are top notch all of a sudden and I’m relatively proud about it.
About two minutes from our campsite. Athabasca River
Saturday morning we started with breakfast, scrambled eggs with veggies, lots of coffee, all made over the fire. Mike had the plan to do a hike to Geraldine lakes on the recommendation from a coworker. It sounded like a challenging hike, but we figured we’d give it a try.
We drove out toward Athabasca falls, at which point we had to drive up a fire road for about 20 minutes. The road was narrow, rocky, full of deep holes; it made slow going for my little sub-compact but we made it without problems. The hike promised a nice walk through a forrest, muddy paths along a breathtaking lake, and not one, but two waterfalls.
Geraldine Lakes – Trail Head
River Rapids
Muddy trails along the river.
Entrance to the trail
The first section of the trail was easy and really enjoyable. A fairly well defined path lead steadily uphill. We crossed a few muddy sections, often using rocks as stepping stones and logs to get across the worst sections. I kept yelling out randomly to make any wildlife nearby aware of us, and yelling parts of Carly Rae Jepsen songs (no shame, don’t care). I noticed no one else was doing this, but I’ve had enough walk ins on bears while walking through the woods and didn’t care to have another one.
After about an hour of following the trail, and a creek, we made it to the first Geraldine Lake. This is where the trail gets muddier, winding in and out of the trees along the rocky bank of the lake. The water colour was incredible, a real rich turquoise/blue, with an an amazing mountain peak on one side. The lake is fed by a really dramatic waterfall on the opposite side.
LOOK AT THAT WATER!
Waterfall off in the distance.
Stryder and I.
The waterfall at the other side of the lake.
After snaking our way along the lake, avoiding the mud as much as possible, we made it to the edge of the waterfall. This is where my first real hesitation came in to what lay ahead. We found ourselves looking at an incredibly steep, muddy hill. Not really a hill, it felt like we were climbing a ladder, or really wide stairs, grabbing onto rocks and trees for stability. My main concern was Stryder, I figured we’d make it up easily enough, but coming down might be a real test. We ascended approximately 90 meters vertically in about 150 meters of horizontal distance (so steep). We made the ascent pretty quickly, only realizing we missed the main trail a ways back and took a really difficult way up. The trail isn’t heavily trafficked and it’s quite easy to stray off of it. *Made a mental note to take the easy way down.
The next portion is where things got interesting…
The talus fields… ultimately the deal breaker on this hike, or the ankle breaker. We read in the description of the hike that we would cross several talus fields, without bothering to look up what they are. Talus fields are stretches of large rocks, boulders, after rock slides occur. Our walk started to slow down at this point. Mike and I probably would have had no problem, but Stryder really struggled at this point. Four paws having to navigate the large boulders, often with huge gaps in between made it really tricky for him. We passed through three of these sections, following little piles of rocks to mark that we were going the right way. At one point we went completely in the wrong direction for about twenty minutes, before heading back down to find the right trail markers again. Twice, Stryder turned around and was like, “guys, I’m done, I can’t do it.”  With a little encouragement, and occasionally carrying him over the really tough sections, guiding him rock by rock, we made our way over section after section. He was a real trooper, all the while reminding me he’s still a pup, making my dog dad concerns kick in. A few more hikes like this, maybe another year older, and he could handle it.
Eventually, we had the second waterfall insight and made it across another talus field that had the river flowing beneath it. This is where things became questionable. One section looked particularly difficult. We had to keep in mind the next sections promised to be even more challenging, and we will still had to make our way back. I was nervous about having to carry Stryder over this portion, not wanting to injure him, or ourselves as it was a long, difficult hike back if something went wrong. Our trail guide said that next section was more talus fields, except going steeply up hill, this time with no trees to grab onto, only your steady footing to assure you. At this point, we decided to turn back. Feeling a little defeated, this was probably the right decision. Going downhill, we made it back to the waterfall pretty quickly.
Relief after the last talus field is behind us.Â
Avoiding the super steep hill we took on the way up, we took the easier route down. Halfway down, things got a little scary. There was a particularly steep section where you used tree roots and rocks as steps to go down. Stryder walked in front of me and brushed a branch aside, and INSTANTLY we were swarmed by a ton of small black bugs. I’m just going to emphasize here, I’ve NEVER experienced bugs like these. They swarmed, they stung, incredibly painful stings, repeatedly, aggressively.  They were all over Stryder, he was panicking, and crying trying to get them off. I swatted them off of him while getting bit myself. Mike in front of me, Stryder in the middle, and me behind, all of us were being stung in a literal slippery situation. I tried to ignore the bugs biting me, picked Stryder up, and Mike grabbed Stryder from me, lowering him down while getting a few really nasty bites, leaving huge welts. As soon as we made it past, the bugs left us alone. We assessed the damage and carried on.
We made it down the side of waterfall and travelled back along the lake.  At one point, we crossed paths with what Mike thought was a large Marmot. I wasn’t so sure it was, but either way, after the bug attack, I was pretty done with the wildlife encounters and was not taking any chances of being attacked by a large rodent. I kept yelling, “HEY. GO AWAY. WE’RE COMING TOWARD YOU.” Slowly, we crossed the rocky section, crossed the muddy trails, and made it to the other side of the lake.
River flowing out of the first lake…
We made good time on the last section back to the trail head, feeling the burn from walking down hill.  At last we made it back to the car, had lunch, and made the drive back down the fire road and back to camp.  This was my first real hike that wasn’t easy, that wasn’t geared toward tourists, and it was amazing. Having to work to reach certain views, visiting places that not everyone can just drive their car to was really rewarding. Also, knowing that we only walked about 7 km round trip, taking about 4 hours, knowing that we were in a fairly remote location, and only crossing paths with a few other people was really surreal. I absolutely want to finish this hike at some point and will be back. We would have likely completed this a lot faster without Stryder, but it was really nice to have him on the hike with us. Good job pupper.
Stryder – slept for hours after this hike
Pupper… completely exhausted after the hike
Pizza Pops over the fire ;)
Sunday morning, we packed up fairly early and made our way out to do the Valley of Five Lakes hike. Our legs were still a little rubbery from the day before, and we didn’t want to be completely exhausted for the drive home. The Five Lakes is approx 4.5 km, circling around five lakes, and not too difficult. It was a much easier hike than the day before, well defined trails, not too much climbing, but offered some amazing sites.
  The trail had us winding through open valleys, along creeks, switchbacks up and down hills.  There was a lot more traffic on this trail, being a fairly friendly hike for anyone willing to walk. It was definitely less rewarding than the day before, but was a welcome change of pace for tired legs, both human and canine. At one point, we made it to the largest lake of five, which offered some of the most crystal clear, turquoise water I’ve ever seen.  I’ve typically only come out to Jasper to go snowboarding in the winter, and these summer trips make me really wonder how I haven’t done this sooner. We spent the most time taking in the views at this lake compared to the other four. Stryder has become a huge water loving dog in the last month or two and nearly pulled me in at one point.
Derek and Stryder
Mike
Lake from the top of the trail
The trail continued on, snaking it’s way along a handful of other lakes, up and down the side of the mountain.
The hike wrapped up with a fairly steady climb out of the valley. At this point, we were all happy to be done and rest our legs, grab some food, and take in a few other sites. I absolutely recommend the Valley of Five Lakes hike for anyone who wants something thats fairly accessible, and offers some amazing views. A lot of families were out and hiking the trails, and there’s a shorter circuit for anyone who doesn’t want to complete the full 5(ish) km. The entire circuit took us about two hours to finish.
Not quite ready to head home yet, and not wanting to do anything too taxing before the drive home, we drove out to Pyramid and Patricia lakes for some site seeing.
Pyramid lake would have been a great place to set out for a kayak, the lake already filled with dozens of paddlers. Feeling surprisingly tired we decided to head back to Jasper, made a quick stop at Bear Paw Bakery, and made the drive back to Edmonton.
Same.
All of us made the drive home feeling a little like Styder in the photo above. Saturday’s Geraldine Lake hike only makes me want to do more back country hiking. The experience was incredible, surreal, and rewarding. I also feel really lucky that I get to do things like this, that so many people don’t take advantage of what’s right here, that Jasper is practically in my backyard, that I can just escape for a weekend and experience an incredible national park, that I can have experiences that make me learn more about myself, the people that I’m with, and put things into perspective.
I’m exhausted, I’m content, and I’m leaving for Montréal in two days… and that sounds like a future post.
Jasper – Geraldine Lakes, Valley of Five Lakes *Recommended Listening During Reading Whitney - Light Upon the Lake - I played this album a few times during the trip, and while writing this post.
Leach Lake - Astotin - Elk Island National Park
Leach Lake – Astotin – Elk Island National Park
Today was the first day getting out on the water. Hopped in the Fiesta mid morning with my friend Mike, and made the short drive, 45 minutes east of Edmonton, to Elk Island National Park and Astotin Lake, inflatable kayak tucked away in the hatch. Knowing what the lakes are like in this part of Alberta, and how dry it has been this year, I really wasn’t sure what to expect.  Then throw in a…
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A post from my new blog.
It’s been a long time since I wrote legitimate posts, but here we go...