Good afternoon Steemies!
Merry Christmas a day late and I hope you all had a great time celebrating with your loved ones ! I suppose if you have children or grand children it's a rewarding time of year, I don't have any so christmas isn't really a big deal for me, mainly just another day except it has turkey and stuffing, now i'm not crazy about turkey but who knew bread cooked in a carcass then drowned in gravy could be so delicious, it's a magical invention!!
Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. (Shot 1/250 sec. f/10 10mm, ISO 200)
My anticipated holiday is New Year, this year being slightly more special than the others, I wanted to celebrate in style. This year is special because we celebrated our 150 year anniversary as a nation. On this anniversary, a gift to every citizen, a free pass to all our national park to whoever wanted one (generally around $140/year or $20/day)which was nice but made the parks very busy. To be honest, most of the celebration was done in Ottawa leaving the rest of Canada on the sidelines of most of the action. Our government spent over half a billion $$ on this( it's kinda sickning, I can only imagine how many people in desperate circumstances that could have been helped instead). Enough about that and back on topic, this year I wanted to do something extra Canadian to finish the last week of our special year what better than to finish it off with one more trip to the Rockies!
Jasper National Park (Shot 1/60 sec. f/8 46mm, ISO 400)
Our great inhabited Canadian landscape and wilderness is our pride and joy, especially in Alberta. The minimally altered space each and everyone of us has the opportunity to visit, explore and interact with wildlife is one of the things I will always love about this country, as much as I want to retire on a warm beach somewhere, I'm not sure I could ever leave this behind...this includes maple syrup. In case you are wondering if the stereotype is true and we take shots of it...heck yeah we do, it's delish.
Growing up, my grand-pa and his brothers owned a sugar camp, farm whatever you want to call it ( in french we call it "erabliere" or "cabane a sucre") where we tap all the trees (at first old school with the collecting all the buckets, later being more sophisticated)and boil the sap until it turns into syrup, if it keeps boiling to a higher temperature, it turns into taffy once poured onto clean snow...yum. I mention this because if there is anything more Canadian than the Rockies it would have to be maple syrup, there is even a maple syrup bank, it has been robbed, there is even a black market for it...I swear this to be true! (Insane I know). Although maple syrup is made 4 provinces over to the east, because the Rockies are an international hot-spot, they advertise maple products like crazy and it's where I can find all the maple products I want and remember eating as a child (it's harder to find in Edmonton). From maple candied pop-corn, candies, taffy, butter to maple flavored everything you can think of...it's like going to candyland... I still haven't found my unicorn tho. If your from eastern Canada you will know what i'm taklking about, it's the maple sugar cones and the maple taffy cones(it's been over a decade since I have seen and had one ).
Jasper Train Station (Shot 1/320 sec. f/9 55mm, ISO 100)
Of course I have plans aside stuffing my face with maple everything, 
Athabasca Falls (Shot 1/250 sec. f/10 26mm, ISO 200)
Last trip we had, because of time restriction, we didn't get to spend much time at Athabasca Falls, on this trip we reserved time to hangout for a while rather than quickly run thru the park. I never been to the Rockies in the winter, the waterfall should be mainly frozen by now, the forecast says -15 celcius or colder for the entire trip. I might just go and climb down the waterfall again ( not recommended and probably not safe) We have a few more locations to visit like Maligne lake and canyon. Jasper isn't only a national park, it's also a dark sky preserve meaning only lights that are required can be installed so light pollution doesn't interfere with the observatory. Of course once I found that out I had too book us an evening at the observatory and planetarium, it will be another first for me. I feel weird that many of my trips seem to be in the same locations but in reality there is so much stuff to do and different trails to hike, I keep discovering new experiences to be had every time.
Shot 1/100 sec. f/9 55mm, ISO 400
I can't give you all the details yet, we are leaving some time for things we find by accident along the way, but that's most of our plans to end 2017 and Canada's 150'th year on a high note Canadian style. The chances of me posting anything until we return from the trip is slim to none so I will go ahead and wish all my Steemie friends a Happy and safe new year, may 2018 bring you all the joy and success you seek and deserve!
Shot 1/250 sec. f/10 55mm, ISO 220
Peace my friends! xox