Lake Louise*

This morning we drove out of Calgary a city with its roots in the Calgary Stampede, a huge rodeo. OilMan can remember when most of Calgary's roads were dirt. Today it is a thriving city on the edge of the plain that stretches away from the Eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. The extra shot was taken from the car near Canmore, just a few miles from the entrance to Banff National Park.

Twenty Years ago we met our friend Carol "the Scottish Ranger" at Lake O'hara in the Canadian Rockies. She looked after The Hermitage in Edinburgh and we spent a couple of years in Edinburgh when our kids were small. A lasting friendship has been the result with visits between Scotland, the US and even a meet-up in Parma, Italy. Carol is now the Executive Director of Europark based in Regensburg Germany, but to us, she will always be "The Scottish Ranger". It was her idea that we have a twenty year reunion where we first met and became friends because of our Edinburgh connection. 

We met again at Lake Louise today where the clouds were just beginning to obscure the top of the Victoria Glacier at the back of the lake. The yellow band above the green tree line is created by the larch trees which turn brilliant yellow at this time of year…the Rockies' answer to fall foliage. It has always been our favorite time of year visit and it seems that many, many other people had the same idea. We were told by the friendly young woman who checked us into our suite that in the last four years the crowds have increased greatly. The long road into Moraine Lake  was closed because the parking lot was full by 9am  and the one at Lake Louise was full by 10. 

We were happy to sit in our pleasant rooms and listen, over a wee dram or two of Macallan to Carol's tales of being chosen as one of a number of  amateur whiskey tasters based on an essay she wrote for a magazine. She arrived at the official venue where there was a table with her name and 51 small unlabeled bottles to be tasted. And that was just the morning. After lunch she sampled the 15 best which she had chosen in the morning and narrowed it down to 5…or maybe three. The top three picks of all the amateurs were then passed along to the professionals who will choose the top single malt Scottish whiskey of the year.  In her essay, Carol said, "whiskey is not a taste, it's an experience".

*BACKBLIP I will try to catch up by posting one backblip and one current picture a day until I get caught up. Bear with me if comments are sparse….