The next night we would stay at Banff Springs Hotel. Along the way, our first stop was to see Athabasca Falls which is within Jasper National Park. Athabasca Falls is in the upper part of the Athabasca River – we had gone rafting on the lower part of the river during our stay in Jasper. While the water doesn’t have the greatest drop, it is considered a powerful waterfall because of the amount of water funneled through relatively narrow openings…
We left Lake Louise and headed for the Jasper Park Lodge via the Icefields Parkway. The Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks are a UNESCO World Heritage Site both because of their beauty and fossils that can be found in the area. Our drive took us into Yoho National Park, Banff National Park and Jasper National Park. The drive was one of incredible scenery with snow-covered mountains, glaciers, beautiful blue lakes colored by glacier sediment, and waterfalls. The next pictures were taken…
My husband and I woke up early in Kananaskis and took a walk after breakfast. We were treated to beautiful views and saw a doe and her fawn on our walk. And then we were off to Lake Louise, but with some incredible stops along the way. One of those stops was Emerald Lake which is in Yoho National Park in British Columbia. The lake was named by Tom Wilson, a Canadian guide, who found it by accident in 1882….
We took our first Tauck tour, the Best of the Canadian Rockies, in 2009. We arrived early so we could explore Calgary and chose a tour date that would allow us to be in town for the Calgary Stampede. The Canadian Pacific Railway has its headquarters in Calgary. It is also known for the hotels it established to promote ridership on their passenger trains. We stayed at two of these, Chateau Lake Louise and Banff Springs Hotel, during this trip….
Queenstown is known as the Adventure Capital of New Zealand (and some say the world). There are all kinds of possibilities – mountain climbing, rock climbing, jet boating, kayaking, hang gliding, tandam paragliding and bungy jumping. In fact, commercial bungy jumping got its start in Queenstown in 1988. We rode on the Skippers Canyon Jet Boats. We began our day as we traveled through Skippers Canyon to the launch area. The drive through the canyon was incredible – it was…
The day after our Midford Sound cruise, we drove from Te Anau to Queenstown. Many of the pictures in this post will simply be of the beautiful scenery we saw along the way. As you might expect, we saw lots and lots of sheep. We also saw horses – frequently wearing a blanket or “rug.” In warmer weather, this is to protect them from insects. We saw alpacas at a rest stop. They are native to South America but were…
After finishing our cruise on Marlborough Sound, we went back to the airport in Blenheim and flew to Te Anau. Te Anau is in the southern part of New Zealand’s south island, just a little more than 3,000 miles from the South Pole. Today our tour would take us to Milford Sound – and there would be incredible beauty every step of the way. Our first stop was Mirror Lakes. These are small lakes very close to the road on…
We flew from Wellington to Blenheim which is located in the northern part of the south island. We then drove via bus to Marlborough Sound. The countryside was beautiful. These are some of the pictures I took from the bus as we drove. When we reached Marlborough Sound, we took a lunch cruise. Marlborough Sound is made up of old river valleys that are now filled with water from the Pacific Ocean. The views are beautiful. While on the cruise,…
We took an international flight from Sydney to Wellington, New Zealand. While we saw iconic attractions in Australia, New Zealand featured beauty everywhere. New Zealand is believed to be one of the last places in the world to be inhabited, with people initially coming from Polynesia – perhaps around 1250AD. It is also relatively isolated from other parts of the world. I had always thought of New Zealand and Australia as being relatively close, but they are actually about 1,000…
The iconic tourist destinations in Sydney are the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. They were both within walking distance of our hotel and we had a beautiful day to see them. The bridge is built of 53,000 tons of steel and at its highest point, is about 440 feet above the harbor. Construction began in 1924 and the bridge opened in 1932. Eight hundred families’ homes were demolished to make room for the bridge. Presently, the bridge…