Drumheller and the Badlands

On Sept 22, 2018 we awoke to ... snow!  We are getting out of Banff just in time, apparently.

Coming out of the foothills, back onto the prairies west of Calgary.  Once again, it was low ceiling for our drive through the mountains and we didn't see much of them.

East of Calgaray, heading towards Drumheller:

We passed this building parked at the side of the road:

And then we got into more ... snow!

For much of my adult life I have wanted to go hike in the badlands.  Wouldn't you know it, we happened to visit at a time when the trail we wanted to do was closed, as it was being used as a movie set.  They weren't even filming that day (no doubt the snow was throwing a wrench into their plans, as well as ours), but we still couldn't hike, but the very nice security guard at the site directed us to this spot where we could see Horseshoe Canyon.  The snow made the badlands extra bad:

Ed's not actually smiling in this one, he is gritting his teeth ... it was cold!

Driving into the valley with the badlands and Drumheller:

We saw dinosaurs everywhere:

Since the weather was so lousy, we spent longer at the museum there.  Here is just one of the dinos that greeted us:

Grise Fiord again

I'll take a pause from re-living last year's trip to Banff.  I am now in Grise Fiord, I have started working in the arctic again.  I've been away since July of 2016.  Feels good to be back.

For contrast, here is the Rideau River in Ottawa just after takeoff:

Ice between northern Quebec and Baffin Island as we fly north:

The new airport terminal in Iqaluit. It was my first time there, I think they opened it in late 2016 or early 2017:

I liked my lunch on the flight to Resolute.  The chicken club sandwich was great, and the Biscoff cookies and Laura Secord chocolate bar were delicious too.

The plane lands now in Pond Inlet on the way to Resolute.  This view is of a piece of Sirmilik National Park (I think, or close to it if not) as we fly over the north end of Baffin Island:

I ended up stuck in Resolute for a day due to high winds, here is a view from my hotel room on April 26 as I watch the flag on the RCMP detachment flap violently:

Here are a few photos of my flight to Grise from Resolute on April 27.  Here we are crossing the NW lobe of Devon Island:

Grise Fiord, the fiord itself and not the town, as we fly in:

Ice patterns in the tidal zone near shore:

I had around 7 feet of legroom on the plane!  Luxury.  There were only 2 of us on the flight:

Nice clouds as I was out skiing in Grise Fiord on April 30:

More nice clouds while skiing on May 1:

... that's all for now.  I'll update later if I get some more nice weather pics.

Driving Saddle Road

On Dec. 4 the itinerary item was to drive the scenic Saddle Rd., which connects the east and west sides of Big Island.  We had wanted to go up to the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano, but we knew already that it was still snowing up there and the road would be blocked.  Still, we headed out to see what we could see.

That's the slope of Mauna Kea ahead of us ... and yep, there's weather up there.

We passed over many old lava flows, this is one:

Lots of volcanic hills:

Heading up Mauna Kea towards the visitor centre.  Yep, that's snow!

And ... this is where it ends.  If we had been collecting photos of places we'd been weathered out, this would be #5 or so by now:

We did a little short hike up the cratered hills, instead:

Yep, it started actively raining again, such that one layer of rain gear wasn't enough:

Back down towards the saddle, passing some craters on the way:

Below is Mauna Loa in the distance, the other volcano, it's got snow happening up at the top too, but you can't see it from the saddle, it's clouded in at the top.

We stopped at a pullout and it happened to be where the Hilo-Pu'u'o'o trail crosses the road.  This trail crosses an 1855 lava flow, but the route roughly follows more ancient trails.  We would have walked part of it except it was, yeah, raining:

Our rental car awaits back at the highway.

We stopped at Rainbow Falls on the way in to Hilo.  Ironically, due to the rain, no rainbow today, but on a clear day I guess it habitually has a rainbow in the spray.

There were banyan trees near the falls:

And, since we had shortened and reduced our stops of the day due to the rain, we got to the hotel early.  Here's Ed sitting in the open air lounge:

Here's hoping for some less miserable weather tomorrow ...

Weathered out again, but off to Big Island

Saturday, Dec. 3 was a beautiful day, so we headed off towards the Iao valley to see an interesting piece of mountain called the Iao needle.  That's the Iao valley straight ahead:

We didn't get far though - as we approached the road on the outskirts of Kahului that goes into the park, there was an electronic sign telling us the road and the park were closed.  It didn't say why, but we are guessing that there was likely flooding after the past few biblical days of rain.

So ... once again we were making new plans on the fly.  As I checked the guidebook, Ed turned the car south.  Got these pictures of the mountains as we drove:

We decided to do a hike, part of the Lahaina Pali trail, which was a pedestrian and mule road back in the 1800's.  The next few photos are from that.

The landscape was interesting but not very varied.  After around a half hour we turned around and decided to go walk on a nearby beach.  Here's one more photo I took on the way down, showing the Haleakala volcano off in the distance, with its stubborn weather system still hanging around the summit:

The beach was beautiful, here's just one photo of it:

Before long, it was time to drive back to Kahului and catch our plane to Big Island.  On the way there we passed this old sugar plant.  I had to lighten the photo to see any detail, so the sky got really washed out, it was the same spectacular blue as the other photos:

Our plane to Big Island was a little Cessna Caravan, a 9-seater.  We were sitting in "first class":

Took a few photos during the flight.  These two are of the resort area of Maui, we never went to that part of the island, looks kind of suburban with all the development.

Here's our first view of Big Island.  Hmmm, is that weather we see on the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano we want to visit tomorrow?

These volcanoes, they leave lava fields lying around everywhere!

After we landed it quickly got dark, so no more photos until we continue our adventure tomorrow ...