Alberta - Day 2

We let everyone sleep in and after breakfast at the hotel, loaded up the van and headed for Waterton National Park, which is near the US border and right at the edge of the Rocky Mountains.  The park was hit hard by a forest fire last year, which has shut down 90% of it, but Sandra had seen pictures and really wanted to go.  Primarily, there are areas with red and green rocks that she wanted to see.  This will also be one of the only parts of this trip that is new to us.

The drive takes about and hour and a half from Lethbridge and then you are in the mountains and in the park.  We stopped in the small village and went to the visitor's centre to figure out where we could go.  There really wasn't much open, but given that most of the park is hiking trails and we have small children, that wasn't a big problem.  Except it meant we weren't going to be able to see the nicest coloured rocks, as you could get to one of the canyons that had them, but the road was closed to motor vehicles and it was only a 10km hike in and a 10km hike out.  We tentatively planned to go through the start of that path as we headed to a picnic area for lunch.

We ate lunch in front of the lake, which was a beautiful spot to eat, though Evan spent the entire meal panicking about bears.  As he finished each thing which left a piece of garbage, he would run it over to the bear proof garbage can and put it in, so that we wouldn't attract any bears.

After lunch, we let the kids play in the lake a bit.  It was cold and clear mountain water, which is so much nicer than the water in southern Saskatchewan.  We then left to do our first (and what ended up being our only) hike.  It was a 3km hike to a waterfall.  The hike started off OK, though the trail quickly ended up with a steep drop off the one side (and no railing), which had me terrified (due to the height) and worried about the smaller children.  However, they were very good at staying on the non-cliff side of the path as much as possible and being careful as they walked.

We lost the older two kids to complaining after about a quarter of the trip and the younger two at the half way point, but managed to coax them all the way to the waterfall.  There, we played in the water, as there was a pool area that was partially accessible, and rested.  Then we headed back and viewed another waterfall that is visible from within town, before walking through the tourist part of town.  We stopped for shaved ice and slushies and tried to shop a bit, but had trouble convincing the kids that they didn't need to buy the first thing they saw in every store, or even that they had to buy anything at all.  Sandra was looking for a Christmas tree ornament, which is one of her go to purchases when travelling, but couldn't find a simple ornament with Waterton on it.

Then it was time to drive back to Lethbridge and hit up a second pizza shop.  This one is more of a take out or buy a slice joint, but we weren't actually there for the pizza (though that is what we ate - and I ordered one medium more than yesterday, and that is how much pizza was left over when we were done.  I hate ordering pizza for groups).  Anyway, the restaurants serves crazy milkshakes, which is what everyone wanted.  We ordered two - one arrived with an ice cream bar and a slice of cheesecake on top of it, while the other had an frozen ice cream cone and whipped cream stuck on top.

Eating was messy, but we managed to finish and then went back to the hotel, where once again, Alex and Evan spent all of the time until 10:00pm riding the water slide.