For the second year in a row, Family Day long weekend provided Mr. GeoK and I with a preview of what it will be like to be empty-nesters.* Being out and about in Canmore and Banff, however, warded off the typical symptoms of empty nest syndrome. By time we merged onto the TransCanada for the drive back to Calgary, we’d taken in six Exposure Photo Festival 2016 shows, discovered a new-to-us bakery in Canmore and walked more than 90,000 steps (including 10 km along the Bow Falls to Hoodoos trail in Banff).

Trail conditions ranged from bare and dry, to mud, to packed snow and ice. Traction aids were essential so we wore MICROspikes or NANOspikes pretty much everywhere. The weather was fairly warm for this time of year, with temperatures dropping below freezing each night and rising to a few degrees above freezing each day. I was hoping to get in some star trail photography, but the one night when skies were clear I failed to properly focus my camera and ended up with a blurred mess of a 90 minute time-lapse. So I won’t be posting the stacked image here (or anywhere). In the daytime, we enjoyed one blue sky afternoon but otherwise experienced diffuse light thanks to cloudy skies.

Walking into Canmore from Three Sisters:

Mount Rundle from two locations:

Blue sky afternoon:

Long time readers of this blog have probably realized that I often turn my attention to particular details of the natural landscape, rather than always going for the big picture. With ice forming and reforming each night there were some interesting things happening along the flood-hardened outlet of a large pond along Three Sisters Creek. And snow cover in shaded areas also provided some interesting material:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Finally, for something completely different, here are a few photographs of the fresh baking we carefully packed into our packs to carry home from Le Fournil Bakery in Canmore. We enjoyed the dark-chocolate filled Viennoiseries as a treat after our longest walk (> 23k steps) and had the most wonderful maple/blueberry/cranberry toast for breakfast the next day. We’re definitely going back next time we’re in Canmore!

As I wrote this up I was wondering what kind of out and about adventures other people got up to over the Family Day long weekend? Feel free to share even just one highlight from your weekend adventures by leaving a comment!

* K was on a senior high band trip to NYC and C’s co-op term, design projects and friends kept him busy in Calgary.