today i decided to finally do a trip to the fish creek provincial park, conveniently located in southern calgary, whence reachable by c-train. well. as long as you use the canyon meadows stop and not the fish creek-lacombe stop, even though the latter name sounds like it is closer. here are some impressions.

i guess i should have went there during fall. with colored leafs this probably looks more interesting. but it’s still nice, though many trails are currently closed.

the last week, i was in bellevue, attending the 14th workshop on elliptic curves and computation, held at microsoft research. during that time, we also visited seattle a bit. unfortunately, i left my good camera at home, but i took my powershot. which is good when there’s enough light. most of the photos had not enough light. but some are still quite ok, i think. and yes, i was really missing my ultra-wide angle lenses. enjoy.

the strange tower is the space needle, and the troll is the fremont troll.

around 2 o’clock in the morning, i was suddenly startled by a very intense beeping. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. so i checked the fire alarm, muted the one inside the apartment and heard more from outside. there was a strange smell on the corridor, so i put on minimalistic clothing (it was -3 degree celsius outside), grabbed my mobile phone, my laptop and my camera bag (unfortunately, i forgot my passport, i have to think of that the next time), a jacket, some socks (no time to put them on), jumped into my shoes, ran downstairs, and joined a bunch of neighbors waiting outside. after some time, sirens approached, three fire trucks showed up. some firemen, armed with hoses, got into the building. we were waiting. i walked up the street a bit, nothing unusual to see from the other side of the house. eventually, the beeping stopped. two of the trucks left. and finally, someone came out of the third truck, and told us that we can go back in. the strange smell was still there, but apparently everything was fine. gladly.
well. i also learned a thing: its impossible to overhear the alarms. in fact, when i walked to the stairs on the corridor, while passing a buzzer, it feld like i’d become deaf if i stop there for just a few seconds. oh well. its time to go back to sleep ;-)

…came, and went a few hours later. nice try, winter.

when i read yesterday that today, two red panda cubs would be presented to the public, i decided to pay calgary zoo another visit. here are some impressions of the really cute two little ones:

after that, i decided to pay the dinosaur section another visit, since i heard that it was heavily updated. indeed, things changed. there were a lot new dinosaur models, looking much better, which were even animated – they move and roar.

even though, there are still some artifacts from the past available, and artifacts due to low water:

anyway. i guess i’ve seen enough of the dinosaur section. there are other, more interesting parts of the zoo to see :)

my last leg of the yukon trip led me to mayo, “the coldest and hottest place in the yukon”. (the lowest temperature ever measured was -62 degrees celsius.)

in mayo i had my first bear encounter. when driving in the direction of keno, i saw a bear near the street, and stopped to take some pictures. the bear was far away (around 100 m), but i still managed to get at least some good shots (at least, after extracting a small portion of the photos).

this was the first and last bear encounter i had. strangely, since i would have expected to see more bears. i already saw more near to banff and jasper. on the first full day, i drove up to keno, and tried one of mike’s pizzas in the keno city snack bar. if you are in the area, you should do the same, his pizzas are really good! (after all, he is italian.) from keno, i drove up to the famous signpost, and then continued to mayo lake and minto lake.

the next day, i again drove up to keno, after paying the mcquesten river a short visit. unfortunately, mike wasn’t around, so i couldn’t eat more pizza. but i drove to hansson lake and mcquesten lake instead, and was awarded with more beautiful sights.

on the third day, the weather turned bad. it was pretty cloudy most of the day, so i decided to visit the binet house interpretive center and just relax. the binet house features some nice stuffed animals:

after spending two full days in haines junction, i continued to dawson, the northernmost point of my journey. (i originally thought about driving up the dempster highway to inuvik, but this is not an easy drive, and besides that, most rental car contracts do not allow you to drive on that highway.) i did this drive in two legs. the first leg was to drive up to carmacks.

i slept in carmacks and continued to dawson on the next day.

arriving in dawson, i quickly found my lodge, the dawson city bed’n breakfast. one of the best places i ever stayed at! if you ever go to dawson, you should consider staying there! on the first evening, i saw signs of another aurora, and drove out of town to get an unobstructed view.

on the first full day in dawson, i decided to drive up the top of the world highway to the us border. this highway goes along the ridges of mountains and makes you feel to be up pretty high, so to speak “at the top of the world”. this highway is one of the not so easy ones, since it is not paved for most parts. but nonetheless, the view is worth it.

after returning, i drove up the midnight dome and took a shot of the ss keno.

on the next day, i decided to do some of the parks canada historical tours; after all, it was the last day of such tours for this year. i started with a tour of the dredge no. 4, a gold mining dredge.

its interiour features many interesting things to photograph:

after visiting the dredge, i drove to the discovery claim and walked around a bit.

following that, i attended a tour through the historic part of the city.

finally, i roamed aboard the ss keno.

on my last full day in dawson, i decided to drive in the mining area. there’s still a lot of active mining going on; it’s really interesting to see the landscape, changing between the typical beautiful yukon landscape and more moon-like landscapes, making you feel rather alien.

unfortunately, i had to leave dawson the next day, heading to mayo. unfortunately, since my lodge was really one of the best places i ever stayed at. (i can’t stop repeating that, sorry.) the good thing is, i got two uncle scrooge comics playing in yukon as a souvenir.

after leaving whitehorse, i traveled to the small town of haines junction, located near to the kluane national park. the trip to haines junction already presented beautiful scenery.

in haines junction, i stayed in a small but very nice cabin. if you’re interested in visiting haines junction and staying in a small cabin, featuring pretty much everything you need (except a bathroom, for which you have to leave the cabin and which you share), you might want to contact paddle wheel adventures.

my first trip starting in haines junction was north to the kluane lake, a rather large lake. here is a panoramic view:

this trip also resulted in a variety of beautiful shots:

on the trip back, i encountered the following lake, which i tried to catch in another panorama:

at the evening of that day, i noticed an aurora. unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy over haines junction, so i drove out of town. after a few kilometers, i got a much better sight.

the next day, i wanted to do some flightseeing of the kluane national park, as hiking is not really an option to do alone. at the airport, i was told to come back later, so i spend the time exploring the area south of haines junction.

finally, i drove back to the airport, and encountered a group of tourists which also wanted to do flightseeing. so we ended up filling two cessnas and flying over the mountains and glaciers:

this was really magnificent.