One of three lakes on the scenic Lake Minnewanka drive, Two Jack Lake is a scenic, easy option for kayaking, canoeing and SUPing. From-the-water views include Mount Rundle, Cascade Mountain and Mount Aylmer. More adventurous paddlers on SUPs or kayaks can pull themselves under the low bridge across the canal and go another 1.5 km south along the canal before turning back.
The Photo Blogging Challenge theme for February 2021 is I Spy With My Eye, which lends itself to pretty much anything. I am grateful that during these ongoing COVID times, host PJ is choosing themes that make it easy to participate from anywhere. We are spending most of our COVID time in beautiful Canmore, Alberta, Canada, where we enjoy getting out and about for exercise and a daily dose of Vitaming N(ature). With health guidelines keeping us close to home for the past year, we appreciate that photography prompts us to keep a sharp eye out for new subject matter and new takes on the familiar.
Winter, like any other time of year, is a great season for being out and about in Canmore. The amazing mountain scenery enhances any outdoor activity, whether pond skating, cross-country skiing, fat biking, snowshoeing or simply (Nordic) walking. Heading out on familiar trails, time after time, could be boring. But by choosing to observe the changing of seasons and search out previously unnoticed details, it's possible to enjoy the same trails season after season, and year after year…
Autumn is our favourite season, and it comes early to this part of the world. Peak colour usually happens in September. But in October, later sunrises and earlier sunsets make it easy to get out at just the right time to enhance lingering fall colours with golden hour light. Since Canadian Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday in October, "Thanksgiving" was the obvious connecting theme for these photographs, all made over the Thanksgiving long weekend spent in Canmore.
As of August 2017, humans take somewhere around 93 million selfies per day. The average millenial will take more than 25,000 selfies in his/her lifetime. I'm definitely not a millenial, and if there's a trick to taking flattering selfies, I haven't figured it out; a phone camera lens in close proximity to my already angular face is not a recipe for success. So I generally turn my back on the whole idea of selfies. So in the spirit of the photo blogging challenge, I got creative and used some old school methods to craft a handful of self-portraits for September.