Last week of drive took us from Yellowstone National Park USA to Canadian Rockies, Western Canada took us round to many pleasant sites of waterfalls, frozen lakes, turquoise lakes, series of snow cladded mountains, glaciers and national parks with full of forests and wildlife like bears, deer and bison.

Some of the places where we enjoyed our days and nights:

Biggest Truck in the World – used for coal mining in Sparwood, Canada

Winter snow has still not melted.  Snow could be traced everywhere.  Some of the lakes were still found frozen

 

 

Snowy Mountains

 

 

 

 

Frozen Lakes

Oh! What a place! Yellowstone National Park.
Here is a glimpse of the wildlife we found.  Bisons were in plenty.

Bison

Beautiful yellow and grey deer were also found in very close proximity.  As some of the places we could walk with them

We were lucky to that suddenly a Coyote (Wolf Family) came in from front of our car (left top picture)

We could see a herd of deer passing through a pond in an absolutely disciplined way, as can be seen on picture at left bottom

Bears just on roadside welcoming us near Jasper. Bear was less than 10 Mtr from us. I was tempted to go out of the car and have a selfie!

One of the main reasons we came to Yellowstone National Park was seeing the Geysers, and they did not disappoint. The anticipation was enough. My goodness, when it erupts…

We saw many geysers. Two were prominent amongst them. One was called Old Faithful. It started with a steaming hole. There are chairs kept around it in a circle around 100 metres in radius. A computer program estimates the time of eruption, with a ten minute margin of error. Everyone sits down, and soon enough, the show begins.

Slowly, the hole begins to throw water out. It faked out three or four times, when the fountain only reached about the height of a full grown man. But then, it started, and didn’t stop. It reached a height of at 200-250 feet, spewing hot water and steam from its mouth, water flowing everywhere.

Sulphur Hot Springs

Our jet-lag had got us by the tails. We all woke up at different times. All of us woke up before 5 am. The plan was wake up at 6:30, but our bodies were still in Mumbai Time!

After breakfast and checking out, we sat in the warmth of a fire that had been set up. There is nothing quite as soothing as the warmth of a fire, the crackling sound it makes, the randomness in its designs and patterns. It really calmed us all down as we waited for a van to take us to the rent-a-car.

Ruhi and I browsed through their cars, and finally settled on a Ford Escape. Owing to its huge trunk, comfortable seats, and – most importantly – in-built navigation system, we thought it was perfect. The person at the counter happened to be from Goregaon, so we got chatting. Delightful person. He took me through it all in Gujrati, which I understand, but can’t quite speak much.

I turned and the engine purred to life. We were on our way. At around 9 a.m., we set out to White Sulphur Springs, on way to Yellowstone, USA.

The road was mostly flat. If you live in India, you have never seen this much flat land in your life. There were no mountains for miles. The ground was brownish-yellow, but I suspect that if one goes in the correct season, it would all be lush and green.

As we got closer, the view got better. The mountains started coming in, and with them, the snow. There is nothing like the feeling of snow: its shining white colour, the cold it brings along with it, the warmth you get from the inside… one can never get enough. I hadn’t expected this. By my plans, we were to come back up north via the snow, but I had not anticipated this beauty at all.

There were vast stretches of road where we were the only car on the road. No one else seemed to want to be here, and that really surprises me. It was also sort of soothing. We had a little joke in the car where we would start clapping and cheering when we saw a car.

All said and done, the car ride from Calgary to White Sulphur Springs, Montana, U.S.A. was about 10 hours. Adding to that the eleven hour layover we had at Heathrow Airport the previous day, and the two nine hour flights it took to get here, it’s safe to say we were all tired out of our minds.

The Motel we stayed at, Spa Hot Springs Motel, was special.  It had three pools with pure natural sulphur spring water, each pool set to a different temperature. The lowest was 98 degrees Fahrenheit.

We got into our swimming suits and to the pools. You will never have a more soothing experience in your life. I don’t know what it is – the high temperature or the Sulphur, but my God, such a refreshing experience.

Tiredness if any vanished.  It was so good, for a moment I considered changing our route so that we could come back to this place on our return route to the Canadian Rockies. Alas, that cannot be. We have better things planned for the way back. More exciting news to come!