I have always wanted to come to the turquoise-coloured lakes. Who wouldn’t want to experience those lakes? To be honest, I had no idea about the Rockies. All I knew was the beyond beautiful lakes Alberta got. So, I’ll enlighten you guys where did those lakes come from. Here we go. So, Canada has some different geographical features. It does make sense owning to the fact that it is a big country. The remarkable feature would be the Rockies. So, some geography lesson here.
Back then, a long long time ago. There were no rocks or mountains or the Rocky Mountains in Canada. Something happens to the mother Earth causing a tectonic subduction. Simple understanding, there were two regions of land slipped onto each other, one side is the upper side and one side settled at the bottom. And dang, the upper side produced the magnificent rocky mountains and they tend to get very tall. The reason why I said they are magnificent because when you are traveling across all land in Canada, all you can see are prairies, nothingness lands maybe some lakes in Ontario and that’s that. But, once you came across the Alberta, Banff, Jasper and their vicinity, suddenly you could see tall, real tall mountains made of rocks. They are so tall that even in the summer when the temperature gets to 30°C or above, the summits are still covered in the snow. And we called that glaciers.
I never thought I would arrive here. The journey is so long from Ottawa, taking days by train and costing a lot of money by plane. This year, I got the opportunity to realize my dream. It seems hard at first but when you are at it, you only thought why did you not doing this earlier. One thing I discovered about life, you did not know how it is until you feel it yourself. Maybe that’s why we shouldn’t judge people but we all know that we do it all the times. Okay now back to the travel journey.
As normal as it could be, we arrived late at Edmonton station. We canceled the Airbnb we booked earlier thinking we could save some money by staying at the train station the rest of our arrival night. But, as I got 25 off for my Airbnb, we used that to stay at the new place and only paid 5CAD for a night. By doing that, we got enough rest, slept on a comfy bed and most importantly we got to take a shower. The host was also a really nice lady because she allowed a flexible check-in and check-out times.
At noon, we check-out and took the bus to the Hertz place. I did not know why, I might be biased but it almost seems like every time we need to walk, carrying our heavy bag packs, that day must be a real hot summer day. But, we managed it all the time. Or at least I did. And we took the car, stopped by McDonald's to get Fillet-O-Fish and damn, a SPRITE, never thought of getting a Sprite from McD. We headed to Cochrane. It took about 3 hours before we took a quick detour to buy fried chicken. You see, there was not many of eatery selling good fried chicken. So, when we know one, we would kill for it.
We arrived in Cochrane at about 6, we rested in the house, probably the biggest, beautiful, high-end furnished Airbnb we ever had to. The kitchen was filled with KitchenAid, Lacostina, and JohnsonJohnson. This is my dream house, I told Ed. And as always, he took my word as serious as he pretends to act seriously. You got what I mean? That evening, after we had wash-ups and filled our stomach. We went to the Lake Vermilion with the view of Mount Vermont. Very confusing these two. We planned to see the sunset but the memory card on Ed’s camera did not work out. He got very pissed plus the mosquitos there made us leave earlier. We went to the Banff town and drove back to Cochrane.
I thought it was nice that we drove all the way up the day before to only figure out the memory card did not work. What if we found about the faulty memory card when we were in Moraine Lake, it would be a shame to our descendants. Their great grandparents went to Moraine Lake and took the pictures using iPhone SE when they got a Sony Alpha NEX-5R in their car. Like what. I would not let that happen.
So, the next day, we cooked. Nope, I cooked and we packed our lunch. I took a long time to cook because I was not used to the kitchen. And apparently, Ed got mad at me for that. The morning did not start well so the rest of the day follows suit. We pretended like nothing was wrong but we are the two young human who has big egos to protect. We were bickering here and there over the small things. The great thing about Ed which did not work with other person is that we never hide our frustration towards each other. And we always work out in the end. Fast to argue, fast to heal.
So, enough with the emotional experiences. We went hiking at first stop at the Johnston Canyon and the almost 2 hours hike brought us to the place I wanted to go. The so-called cave has a very scenic view except there were too many people there. Apparently, the two things that made it a scenic view is the small waterfall and the sort of small but tall rock in front of it. I almost cried when I see the view. It is beyond beautiful. Imagine a turquoise waterfall with brownish hill across it. And you can take pictures with the background of these two. Again, Ed blamed/mad at me for wearing jeans when he got the chance to ask me to change at home. To his defense, he thought I would take a long time to change a pair of pants. Did he think I am a millipede that has 1000 pair of legs?
Okay, I will stop babbling about Ed. He sometimes does not make sense. Okay, after that we drove an additional one hour to the Emerald Lake. It is in Yoho National Park so I am officially have been to the three legendary National Parks in Alberta but Yoho is in BC but whatever. Yeayyy. The view was very nice with a turquoise color lake and green mountains as the background. But we were chasing times so we only spent a while here. Ed got mad at me again for not taking his picture perfectly before the battery ran out. I could not comprehend why he did not charge his camera’s battery the night before when he knew he will be using the camera all day long.
We drove down and on the way to the Moraine Lake, we stopped at the Natural Bridge and took some photos of it. It was plain when we saw it before our eyes but exquisite when we saw it again in the photo library. Hard to appreciate things before our eyes ain’t it. Next, The Moraine Lake. This lake is kind of personal to me. I was really wanted to come here because mum and I talked about this lake before I flew to Canada. She said I should see it because she really wanted to see it. And, when I see the Valley of the Ten Peaks, the thing I could only do is praying so I could bring my mum here one fine day. I imagine her smiling, seeing the view beside me. I personally think the lake is my lake, for her stunning view and for the trust my mum put in me.
Next, we went to Lake Louise. It is the most famous of all lakes. The lake is turquoise in colour with some mountain views at the background. It was beautiful but it is just that. I wish I could spend more time in those lakes but we don’t have much time. I would not let Ed drove till late night because he needed to drive again tomorrow morning and it’s going to be a long drive. If only I could drive, I don’t know how many times that phrase has been whispering in my mind all this time. But I don't want to kill someone due to my driving incompetence.
Banff National Park visit is a lifetime experience. No matter how advanced our camera, it could never do justice to the views we see along the way. The Rocky Mountains, the glaciers, the stunning colour lakes and everything between them. I wish I could come here again one day. Perhaps, with my mum. The next day, Ed alone drove up to Edmonton and I met the lovebird, Fatin and Amirul. They both Ed’s CPU mate
The four of us took a little stroll around Edmonton town. We went to the West Edmonton Mall, the biggest mall in Canada yet is still smaller than Sunway Pyramid according to Amirul. The reason why it is so big because it has a water park, a theme-park and seal show in it. So, above all things in Edmonton, it is good to make new friends and I am looking forward to meeting these two in the future. We took the train back to Toronto and it has been three days on the train and we are still not arriving in Toronto. Would never ride this train again in the future. But, might only be The Canadian. I still want to go to Niagara Falls.
