August 15, 2010 Waterton Day 2

Well day two in Waterton started out early. We haven’t really deviated from our early to bed, early to rise. We were up at around 7 am and headed off again. We lucked out today, the weather was beautiful, nice and sunny. We took the doors off the Jeep and headed up to Cameron Lake.

The first stop was along the Akamina Parkway, where we saw the first commercial oil well in Alberta. The original drill pipe is still in place at the bottom of the monument. A cairn in the shape of an oil derrick commemorates the discovery. It was estimated that the first oil well in Alberta produced 300 barrels a day. The natives and animals knew for thousands of years that the 'black gold' that seeped from the ground and into Cameron Creek. It was used for medicinal purposes, to smear on open wounds and for use as insect repellent. Shortly after this success, prospectors and other opportunists drilled wells throughout the park. Waterton Lakes National Park was commissioned in 1895, the fourth national park in Canada. However, due to the lack environmental laws and the fact that Alberta was not designated a province yet, drilling was permitted within the park borders.

The next stop was Cameron Lake. This was a beautiful location. The Akamina mountain range back up the lake and we got some fantastic pictures with the mountains reflecting in the water. We were going to hike around the mountain but there were grizzly bear warnings on the trail and decided that Lindy was too tempting an appetizer, so instead we looked with the spotting scopes to see if we could see any bears on the mountain side, but no luck.

As we headed back down the parkway back towards town we came upon a herd of mountain sheep running along the road. On our way back to the campsite we stopped at Cameron Falls. This is one of the most photographed places in Waterton. It was funny when I had woken up that morning, I took Lindy out for her morning business and all I could hear was this crashing noise. I know now that it was the waterfall. After taking pictures of the waterfall we headed back to the motor home for lunch. A quick snack and we were back on the road again, this time we headed up to the buffalo paddock.

This area is a fenced in area that has buffalo roaming free in. You can take your vehicle into the area and drive around a loop looking for the buffalo. It was a nice drive but all the buffalo were hanging around the lake, pretty much ignoring everyone. There was about seven of them. A couple bulls, some females and a bunch of young ones.

We then headed back into town to take some pictures of the Prince of Wales Hotel and the Lake in the sunshine. While we were up there I checked my GPS and saw that there was a new geocache not far from the hotel. I double checked the listing and it looked like no one had found it yet. So back into the Jeep and we motored back down to parking lot of the visitor centre. The description said that it was a short hike up the hill. When we checked the trail information we discovered that this was the Bear Hump Hike. Up we started, we got to the cache, about half way up, found it, but decided to continue up to the top of the trail and do the cache on the way back down. So onward and upward we continued. It was a lot longer than we thought. Everyone that was coming back down the trail kept telling us what a great view it was from the top, so we kept going. Well we finally made it to the top and everyone was right it was a fantastic view. There were lots of people at the top a whole bunch of cheeky chipmunks. They were really cute. We got some fantastic pictures from up there. After we had enjoyed the view, we headed back down the trail. It was a little harder on my knees going down than up, but as long as I used Lenny’s shoulder for balance I was fine. We picked up the cache on our way back. I was a little worried that with so many people on the trail someone else might have gotten it while we were at the top but I worried for nothing. We were the FTF and got a Tim Horton’s gift card. Well it turned out to be a great hike and we had worked up an appetite. So back to the campsite for a pot roast that we had put into the croak pot earlier in the day. After supper we went for a walk around the lake and took some pictures of the Bears Hump that we had hiked up earlier in the afternoon.