Manning Park, June 27, 2010 – Part two

Time to get back to posting the rest of our day trip to Manning Park on June 27th….I’ve adjusted the live writer saving to automatically save postings so that won’t happen again!  Loosing the whole posting because the computer froze up! that is.

So after leaving Rhododendron Flats we decided to head up to the alpine meadows….

The road to the meadows is paved until the look out, then continues on as gravel, very wash boardy I might add, to the meadows.   On this day the gate was still across, blocking access as the road is only opened when completely thawed out and dry.  We parked at the gate and walked up the road.  This being a view off towards the west.

This Chipmunk was out and about and watched us go by…

The road itself, in this case we’re looking back the way we’d come…

Here is a close up of some of that Moss Phlox growing on the bank….remember when we had been here in early June on the way back from our big trip, this same plant was in full flower in the lower level campground.

Beside’s the Phlox there were lots of wildflowers in bloom, this one is called ‘Ball head Water leaf’…

The shrill call alerted us to this obviously nursing mother Yellow Bellied Marmot….she was down in the rocks on the lower side of the road.

Avalanche lilies carpeted the area in spots.  If all conditions fall just right and the road opens right to the meadows at exactly the right time when the Avalanche Lilies are in full bloom, it is a sight to behold….unfortunately, usually by the time the road opens the lilies are over.  We’ve only managed to see them in all  their glory once.

Here is a close up…Avalanche Lilies, by the way, are a favorite food of Black Bears, so always be ‘bear aware’ when you are in areas where they are in flower.

One thinks of Violets as being delicate little flowers but look at these guys growing in a crack in rock and obviously thriving!

From the meadows road we headed back down and over to the Beaver Pond…

Like Rhododendron Flats, this is another road side attraction with a short trail from a parking lot down to the pond itself.  We always check it out because you just never know what you’ll see here.

This Sticky Geranium Flower was growing right beside the trail…

Then we spotted these ducklings…..Goldeneyes for sure…I think Barrow’s Goldeneye…one of the ‘cutest’ of the ducklings.

Here is a closer look ~ the others were buzzing around on the water like little wind up toys!

There’s mom…

She was more concerned about keeping this male Mallard away….this guy is loosing his heads bright green breeding color and going into his ‘eclipse’ plumage.

On the way back to the car we spotted this older duckling….obviously from a different clutch.

By now the day had clouded over and rain threatened but we headed to Strawberry Flats for the last walk of the day…

Strawberry flats is located just off of the road that leads to the ski hill…in winter this trail forms part of the cross country ski trail network and in summer is the starting point for a number of more lengthy hikes.

The area has changed a lot over the years as the trees get larger there are less open areas but even so there is still an abundance of wildflowers…

These ‘Chocolate’ or ‘Checkered’ Lily were a great find this day.

Here a patch of Indian Paintbrush with an understory of Wild Strawberries that gives the are it’s name…

Lots of these Early Blue Violets mixed in with the Strawberries as well.

Here is a shot with the violets, strawberries and one of those Chocolate Lilies.

Heading back to the car, the floor in the denser part of the forest was carpeted with Yellow Violets..

And finally, as we head for home, this Mule Deer was browsing on the fresh leafs.  Thus bringing to a conclusion another day at Manning Park ~ a place that never seems to disappoint.

Spring Trip 2010 - Day 12 Part 1 - Dinosaur Provincial Park

Now, a note to all of you who have been following the saga of my desktop computer - it is home, it is sitting here on the floor, but since it now has to be started from scratch again, I am waiting for a clear mind before attempting to even plug it in and starting to download programs into it etc. The problem, so I am told, was a faulty 'Mother Board', a once in a million occurrence. Said 'Mother Board' has now been replaced....so we shall see!

Now back to the trip. Monday, May 3, we once again woke up to beautiful clear blue skies.
Since we had already decided to spend one more day here, we had a leisurely breakfast, sitting outside with our morning coffee. Ernie thought I should do the hike up behind the visitor's center with him. I was told it was a bit 'scrabbily' in parts, but was assured I could make it, and that the view was worth it, then if we left the dogs at home, we could check out the visitor's center and the gift shop. Ernie had taken Shantz with him when he went to the Self Registration station to pay for another night, and she, after all the exercise of the day before, didn't show much enthusiasm for more, and was quite happy to curl up in her kennel in the truck....

So after putting our hiking boots on (wanted sure footing in those 'scrabbily' parts!), we set off. Here are some of the cactus encountered along the way...in another months time they will all be in flower......

more of those Prairie Crocus......

and me down there taking pictures of them.......

a close up of 'twins'......

and another pair.......

this interesting little plant is called 'Hooker's Towsendia' I haven't been able to find a common name for it. My guide book shows it with white flowers but does say that it can also have pink flowers, which this one did. Only saw the one plant.....

There was lots more of that Moss Phlox that we'd seen at Chin Lake, growing up in this area.....

Here is a closer look.....

and now we are pretty much up on top....views not fully appreciated as my love of heights is basically none existent!

there were, indeed, 'scrabbily' places, in fact a few spots were, in my opinion, down right treacherous and I'm not sure why there aren't some warning signs in place regarding the difficulty of the walk ~ perhaps there are during tourist season.... I want you to pay attention to what is happening in the sky.......

and just keep it in mind. If I remember correctly from my school science lessons, clouds like this signify a change in the weather.....

The cloud was coming from the south, looking east....the sky was still nice and blue.... I should mention that the wind up here was pretty strong....another reason it was difficult to enjoy the view while perched on the edge.....

more of the badlands.....some areas of that gray stuff were wet and extreme caution was necessary because boy, was it slippery!!!

and one last one....the campground is down there in the middle in this picture.

So next we went to the visitor's center.....I took a few pictures.....there was nothing saying you couldn't....

One of the main displays.....

and another....

and a final one.... We then started talking to the attendant there, we asked about the lack of water being available and she said that there was supposed to be water at the sani dump ~ we assured here we had tried there and there wasn't, that there were no taps....so she phoned maintenance about that and then she told us there was a wind warning in effect for the area, with winds of up to 100 kph forecast, to start late in the afternoon, with rain, turning to snow, over night.....and it was like "What?!" The snow was supposed to end by noon the next day. Now what? She checked everything within a day's drive, east, west and north for us and everywhere the forecast was the same or worse. She said that the weather here had been beautiful, in April temperatures were in the 20's ~ at Easter the campground had been basically full ~ that this weather was NOT normal for this time of the year.

Well, first order of business, now we had this information was to change campsites as the one we were in was exposed, and as you've seen, under some pretty big old Poplar trees. In order to change sites we had to pack up, so decided we might as well make a run into Brooks (48 km each way) because we had an empty propane tank again (tanks in the camper aren't as large as the ones we had for the trailer and the furnace had been running pretty much none stop at night), so this we did. Picked up a loaf of bread, returned to the park, went to the dump station and dumped what we had in the tanks, and found that there were still no 'taps' but Ernie tried using pliers and lo and behold water gushed forth....so we were able to finally fill the water tank......

to be continued.....

Spring Trip 2010 - Day 9 - Chin Lake, Alberta

Day 9 - Friday, April 30th, we woke up to no snow and clearing skies! A treat after the day before. Took this picture to show the campground....this was the Shady Hollow RV Park... we took advantage of the sewer system to empty the holding tanks...but couldn't do anything about water. Ernie talked to the owner...they were opening 'officially' on the 1st...just a day away..

It seemed the birds here were making up for lost time ~ look at the size of the mouthful of nesting material this Robin had!

Starlings were also busy gathering....

After a bit of a slow start we were ready to hit the road...the question was 'to where?' The RV park operator said that she had a friend who lived south...the direction to Waterton or Police Outpost and the snow was 'thigh high'...obviously that direction wasn't an option!

We decided we'd head east on highway 3 to Leithbridge, then it was either continue on to Taber, then cut north to Brooks and head to Dinosaur Provincial Park (not somewhere we had originally planned to visit this trip), or cut south and try for Writing on Stone....the thinking being that maybe the snow had been concentrated closer to the mountains and that maybe, here, on the other side of the province there would only have been a dusting.... So this is what we elected to do....taking #4 heading to Milk River. It didn't take long to realize that this was a mistake...it wasn't snowy at Leithbridge....

but the further south we got...the deeper the snow...until we reached the Information Center at Milk River (closed of course)....here the snow was about 6 inches deep and it didn't appear that any side roads had been cleared. Writing on Stone is situated another 44 km from this point along a pretty isolated road that probably hadn't even been cleared, the temperature had dropped to 4 degrees, it looked like it could snow again.....it just wasn't worth the risk....so now, thoroughly disgusted, having had no lunch, not even a cup of coffee and getting awfully tired of the wind which continued to blow...we turned north again to the little town of Warner, where we cut off onto secondary highway #36 - heading north towards Taber....the temperature had warmed back up to 10 degrees.....and then, lo and behold, we saw a sign that said 'Chin Lake Campground' go down a dip in the road towards Chin Lake and take the turn off into the campground, thinking we could at least take a break and get something to eat....what we found was this absolutely delightful little campground......

not showing on any map - like all the community campgrounds we encountered. It was open...the fee was only $15 without power, $20 with, we opted for power once we checked that it was on (this so the furnace could run all night if it wanted to) (water wasn't on, same old, same old). The place was absolutely pristine....and we were the only people there. Ernie took the above picture of the whole overlay from on top of the hillside beside it where there were all sorts of foot paths you could wander......

From the same vantage point he took this one that is looking off to the east showing this long narrow lake that I think is probably man made.

Revitalized now, in mind and stomach, we did some exploring....and discovered a number of flower species....see it really is spring!

Ernie took this close up of this white flowered 'Moss Phlox' ~ (I should mention that from this point on, any pictures taken with my SLR camera, remain on the memory card in the camera. My desktop computer remains at London Drugs where it is proving to be as big a mystery to them as it was to me. I can't download the card to this old lap top because it is out of space ~ so I'm just waiting for the desktop to be solved....so will probably re-visit some of these spots...once that happens. )

This little guy is called Cushion Milkvetch......

and this is Musinech....we'll be seeing a lot more of this in the future. It is very similar to Western Parsley but Musinech grows very low to the ground while Parsley has a tall flower stem.

And we'll be seeing a lot more of this too....this is 'Owl Clover'

and remember my goal of seeing 'Prairie Crocus'? Well these are the first....they were growing on the north slope of the hill and I wasn't too thrilled about being perched there on a narrow game trail....trying to get a picture ~ but they might be the only ones we'd see! (Wrong)

Ernie got this close up....

and there were birds here too.....Robins of course.....

but also the first American White Pelicans of the trip! That thing on the beak shows that this is a breeding adult.

another shot Ernie managed as the bird flew over his head.

The day ended very pleasantly with the wind dying, the sun shining, we were able to keep the camper door open until almost 8 in the evening....all the damp mats and chairs etc. got dried out...we were back on track!

Bird List: Red-breasted Nuthatch - 1; Franklin Gull - 23; Magpie - 2; Prairie Falcon - 1; American White Pelican -8; Yellow Rump Warbler (Myrtle) -1; Ringbill Gull - 7; Northern Harrier - 1; Brewer's Blackbirds - 4; White Crowned Sparrows -4; Mourning Dove - 1; Osprey - 1; Killdeer - 1; Great Horned Owl - 2; House Sparrows - 12; Junco - 1.