Handstands Across America » Montana

Kootenay and Banff (Today is Day 28!)

Sam E. — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:15:00 +0000

Another point of the Continental Divide, soo cool.

I poured Water on both sides… Atlantic and Pacific!

Entering Alberta…

View from the roadside in Kootenay National

Another View from that Roadside… See the smoke?

Awesome

Hilly?

Paint Pots are pretty neat I’d say. Orange…

Orange Stream… They’re located in Kootenay National Park, right near the border of B.C. and Alberta

More Orange…

A little green and orange.

Orange River for the win

Awesome

The Kootenay River, right by the road

Looking upstream towards the footbridge

Marble Canyon, Kootenay National Park

More Marble Canyon

Video of the “Marble Canyon”

Awesome roadside view

Canada, eh?

View down the main street into banff, headed right at the mountain!

The infamous Banff hotel… Mortgage, or one night here?

Lake Minnewanka, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

More Lake (Thanks Cecil for telling me to stop by!)

Minnewanka has been handstanded!

Dreary Afternoon, today is supposed to be worse

Ahhh, animals!

Mountains!

Cloud? or Mountain?

One of my favorites of Lake Minnewanka. The boatride (not on that boat) is 40 dollars, and too much for me this time… maybe i’ll catch one at Lake Louise?

Looking down the Pier

Soo… the US is awesome, and so is Canada!

Sam E. — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:31:00 +0000

The US… Glacier National Park

Lake McDonald

Doesn’t it look like a face of someone lying on their back?

Great colors!

Lake McDonald, so pretty, got handstanded!

View from the Glacier Park Boat on Lake McDonald

The boat when on the dock.

My “artsy” shot

Morning light coming through the trees in Glacier National Park, on my way up to Avalanche Lake

Avalanche Lake, check out those falls!

Trail up the mountain…

Close up of the waterfalls at Avalanche Lake

And a cool reflecting of the mountains/sky shot at avalanche lake

A different perspective from the shores of lake McDonald

A view from the “Going-to-the-sun-road”

And another view… what a beautiful place.

Bald Eagle

About to leave the U.S.

Made it to Canada!

Welcome to B.C.

They are a little full of themselves though?

Handstanding in the backyard with Cass and Logan the Dog in the picture

View from Swansea Mountain this past friday night. Had to take a forestry road up there and we sure needed Forrest’s 4-wheel drive

Invermere, B.C., Canada and that “ramp” is for hang gliders. Pretty cool, eh?

Cropped night shot of Invermere

From the back of the boat! It’s the same lake as in the picture above on the left

I went for a quick glider ride. Wish it was longer, but too much money in the first place… Definitely worth it though! That’s my pilot Brian, who had us do a “wingover”, basically a flip which was outta this world.

The lake from the Glider

The towplane

A different view of Swansea Mountain… See the glider ramp from the shot above?

This club sounded great, would totally do it if i lived here!

UPDATE:
Captions added and… I will report more on Canada as I see it. Off to Banff today! Cheers.

Two Weeks Notice

Sam E. — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:35:00 +0000

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m moving to Canada… for 2 weeks. I know this is abrupt, but it’s something I have to do. Bigfoot told me to.

Love, your son,
-Sam

I’m heading from Whitefish, MT into Invermere, British Columbia today and will be checking out Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper, Whistler, Vancouver and Vancouver Island.

I’ll be back in the U.S. to hang out with Dan and Martha in Seattle before Labor Day, and then on to Mike in Portland.

Looking forward to people, and to the BEAUTIFUL Canadian Rockies I have heard so much about.

Recapping the last 2? days

Yesterday (Thursday)

I hiked up to Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park, and then hung out by lake McDonald during the day before heading over to Whitefish, MT where I stayed in the Whitefish KOA. I hung out with a family from Saskatchewan, Canada who had a cabin nextdoor. They were pretty great people, fun to talk to, and I got a free 2 hot dog dinner! Baboom!

The night before I slept in my car :-p, so it was an upgrade. Looking forward to seeing Forrest, Cassy and more Canadians!

Some Pics from the last 2 days…

coming soon…

HDR to the Maximum

Sam E. — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:45:00 +0000

I got played around with HDRs last night and made 3 of them… (High Dynamic Range images which are created by combining 3 pictures with different exposure levels)

Ptarmigan Tunnel (Say that 5 times real fast )

The other side of the Ptarmigan Tunnel, WOW.

The Badlands make you feel good inside.

P.S. – If anyone hasn’t noticed… I had coffee this morning

Day 21 – In Glacier until Friday, then CANADA!

Sam E. — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:02:00 +0000

Why Hello!

I’m lazy, I know. I’ve been sitting around doing laundry and checking for cheap flights so Kristen can make it out to San Francisco to meet me (and not finding much cheaper than 500 bucks, yikes!)

Anyways, My first day in Glacier (Monday), I headed up to the “Many Glacier” entrance of the National Park and hiked the Iceberg Lake and then the Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail. That was a 15 miles day, and didn’t really wear me out until the next day. I did enjoy the Pancake, Sausage and Coffee breakfast. Warm food does hit the spot!

Yesterday I went drove up the “Going-to-the-sun-road” and headed up to logans pass. I did a portion of the “Garden Wall” and then hiked up Logan’s pass to hidden lake. It wasn’t much of a hiking day, maybe 6 miles, but good enough! I came back to my site (already set up because I actually stayed in the same place for 2 nights!) and enjoyed a smoked sausage on my manly fire I made.

Today I’m going to head over to the western side of the park and am going to check it out!

Pics… In absolutely no order, but with captions!

“Hidden” lake… I SEE IT!

On the way to Iceberg Lake

Logan’s Pass

Your friend?

Iceberg Lake

On the Iceberg Lake Trail

Divide THIS!

Something is Wrong? with this picture.

Goat goat!

Lions and Tigers and Grizzly ____’s O-MY!

The Yellowstone Rafting Trip…

Sam E. — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:10:00 +0000

Was fun! I went this past thursday/friday and there wasn’t as much whitewater as I expected, but was nice.

There were two guides, one a sophomore in college and one a first year medical student. Then two families, one from Connecticut and the other from Catalonia in Spain.

Sunset at camp…

Broken Backcountry

Sam E. — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:28:00 +0000

Well, I didn’t end up hiking in the backcountry tonight. I was heistant about hiking 20 miles alone in grizzly bear country, the weather is completely dreary, and mom asked I didn’t. She didn’t cause dad got into a biking accident, along with just caring for my safety. He flipped the bike and messed up his right elbow, broke some ribs? and fractured a vertebrae or two? Not exactly sure on the exact details, but I got to talk to him tonight, which was great. We were worried he broke his femur (thigh bone) but luckily that is just heavily bruised. Lesson goes… WEAR YOUR HELMET… He did too, and that’s probably why he will heal. Heard that his helmet was broken all to pieces, so thankfully that took most of the impact. Crazy time. I’m hoping he will do a full recovery but it sounds like it’ll be painful here for a while.

I’m in Livingston Montana after checking out Yellowstone for my last day today. Heading up to Glacier National Park tomorrow

Got to see old faithful, do white water rafting on the yellowstone river, hike to Osprey Falls, and hang out.

Love you Dad!

Top of Beartooth Pass… Quite possibly my favorite road…

Old Faithful Strikes again!