Chasing Clean Air

The Banff Rocky Mountain Resort

When traveling to clean air areas, I appreciate feeling cozy like I'm at home with my blow-dryer, oatmeal, wireless connection, firm-but-not-too-firm bed, a working telephone or cable for Skype, and cotton fluffy towels and matching bathrobe.

And, naturally, being the nature-girl that I am, I also appreciate full immersion in Nature, as if I were bathing in eucalyptus aroma.

Soaking my visual senses with mountains, trees, and flowers.

And my common sense in clean air.

Reign in my robotic sense to be merely common, picking up a phone whenever it rings and wasting precious moments checking email, and what remains is that "Let's get away from it all" luxurious feeling.

The feeling of wanting to camp without risk of squatting in the bushes when Nature calls.

Well, I can tell you that the best way to accomplish this feat is to stay in a resort at a national park.

A clean-air national park.

The Banff Rocky Mountain Resort in Banff National Park provided this unique experience, for they not only met all of my basic requirements, they had luxuries, too.

A restaurant, bar, weight machines, and...

Banff Discovery Tour - Part Four Banff Hot Springs

I squeezed my nose, for the sulphur stench bubbling up from Banff's Hot Springs was awful. We walked along the path to Banff's birthplace.

A tourist attraction for years.

Once fought over by three railroad workers who discovered the warm waters, the hot springs remain a special tourist site, documenting the history of the area in an adjoining museum.

While I recommend visiting, if you're like me, the trip will go fast through an underground cave where warm waters bubble, and above to the pool where tourists once bathed with views of mountains and trees.

Traveling Solo in Banff - Part Three

Tour guide Frederick drove us in the Banff Discovery Tour van, where we discovered surprises like Bow Falls along our way.

To begin, we passed the John MacDonald statue, which stood in front of the Fairmont's Banff Springs Hotel.

Boris tapped his foot.

"John MacDonald was Canada's first prime minister and he created Canada's first national park system in order to protect nature's beauty," Frederick said.

"Today the Banff National Park, which includes Lake Louise, the Columbia Icefield and .... 

Boris tapped his foot more recklessly. He had something to get off his starched Ralph Lauren chest, and he needed to get it off now.

Interrupting, Boris said forcefully, "The Russians!"

Are they coming?

He stared at me for an awkward moment. Leonardo's eyes followed.

"You're not Russian are you?" Boris asked, voice softening.

"No," I replied.

Boris dug in hard and fast now.

Traveling Solo in Banff - Part Two

When our Banff Discovery Tour pulled up to The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and our tour guide Frederick opened the van's door to the wide world that would include the one man who'd be joining our tour, making me for at least one day no longer the token female, a whiff of what reminded me of Beverly Hills broadsided my senses.

Was that Calvin Klein's Eternity for Men?

Applied liberally, this aftershave is known to linger in mid-air long enough to scare off everyone within a 360 degree radius.

Or attract bears.

The man I'd learn was called Boris sported slick black hair, a designer shirt, and a clean-shaven face. No mountain man here but rather a model out of the pages of GQ.

Boris clutched a black Gucci bag as he stepped into our van calling for his companion, Leonardo.

Leonardo scurried to the van, extending a manicured hand.

Boris and Leonardo were good friends from the Netherlands, and I'd learn they loved trains (they had a miniature one with tracks in their livingroom), beauty, and designer hand-bags.

The three of us were off!

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Traveling Solo

Wherever I traveled there were couples.

Vacationers.

Robust eco-tour guides.

And their wives, who cooked three-course hearty meals for them, and me.

There were brides and grooms who posed by Beacon Park bridges in Victoria.

Glacial-fed lakes in Banff.

The Fairmont Hotel lobby in Jasper.

More people got married in Canada this summer than I can count.

And if I weren't sure of this fact, I had informants. Like  my new friend Sumner who'd call in the evening at the Fairmont where we stayed in separate rooms.

"Quick! Look outside your window. Another bride is getting married by the lake."

Then he'd laugh.

The Rocky Mountaineer Train. The Whistler Mountaineer. Jam packed with couples, too. 

The Brewster Tour Bus from Jasper to Banff.

Couples.

But when I awoke mid-week at the Banff Rocky Mountain Resort, I was told there'd be only one person on my tour--a man.

As you might imagine, my imagination went wild.

What would he look like? How old would he be?

Would he be a widower?

Banff attracted virile mountain men, which is an attractive quality especially since I'd escaped the big city where men's virility seeps through steel doors in proportion to time trapped in cars on local freeways, spitting exhaust fumes along with their strength that otherwise could have contributed to what might have been.

Massive Ice Shelf Breaks Loose in Canada

A massive sheet of ice the size of Manhattan broke loose today, splashing into the Arctic Ocean due to global warming, as Sarah Palin rang in her Republican VP nomination crying, "Drill, baby drill!"

Drill for oil in the delicate Arctic region, if Mrs. Palin has her way. She doesn't believe in man-made climate change.

The Makham Ice Shelf was 4500 years old.

Palin doesn't rely on scientists for her information. So if and when a neighborhood floods near you, recall Palin's judgment. Question McCain who did not vote for tax credits for wind and solar companies on eight occasions when he could have.

The Makham Ice Shelf was one of three major ice shelves that broke off this summer.

Global warming.

Combined these ice shelves represented approx. 82 square miles or three Manhattans and half the biomass for the entire Canadian Ice Shelf ecosystem.

Sarah Palin ignored climate change in her nomination speech.

Nature can't be ignored.

Photo of glacier along Icefield Parkway in Canada where I got to see the big picture. Run off from this glacier and icefield pours into the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and it's melting fast.

Today many more ecosystems are on the verge of extinction. Perhaps the McCain/Palin ticket is too.

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