Select Page
Day 9 – Ha Ling Peak and Floating in Canmore

Day 9 – Ha Ling Peak and Floating in Canmore

by | Jul 27, 2017 | Adventure, Hiking, Outdoors, Wedding Adventure

Ha Ling is a very distinguishable peak from the town of Canmore. As soon as we arrived in town I could tell Jay was thinking, “I want to climb that thing”.
In the morning, we fueled up with some yummy breakfast tacos and drove into town to find someone who might know a little more about the trail.
The guy at the Bike Cafe in Canmore described Ha Ling as the “Stairmaster to Hell”. What an awesome description right?
Now having done the hike, he couldn’t have been more spot on. He also mentioned that he hiked to the top with his 2 old, overweight, furry dogs in about 4.5 hours (give or take a few breaks). 4.5 hours of Stairmaster hell isn’t that bad, lol.
The drive up to the trailhead was a rather loose and dusty. On the way up, we passed a few pristine turquoise rivers and lakes along the way with some great views of Bow Valley.
The trailhead looks just as we pictured it. Rooty and steep! #letthefunbegin
The Ha Ling trail meanders through the pines for the first 3/4 of the way up featuring beautiful lookouts along the way.
This trail, for being on the difficult side, is quite busy. We ran into many other hikers along the way.
When we exited the forest there was a steep, dusty and loose scramble up to the top. I thought it was rather rugged but there were people in beat up Nikes hauling ass, so really anyone with enough stamina can make it up this trail. Here’s Jay in the shoulder area before we kept heading up to the peak (which is not visible in this photo since the peak is to the left).
Here I am on the peak with Cooper. Notice how I’m a good 5 ft from the edge? It was a straight vertical drop on the other side!  Jay knows exposure isn’t my favorite thing, but the views made this hike totally worth it.
After spending some time at the peak it was now time to descend. Hiking poles would have come in handy considering our knees weren’t so happy by the end.
This hike took us about 4 hours from start to finish.
Once we got back to the truck we headed back to Canmore to meet up with Danielle and Bill. They were treating us to a FLOAT as a wedding gift.  No, not a river float trip but a FLOAT experience.
Okay, let me explain. Basically, you float, naked, in a giant pod filled with 10″ of water that has about 800 lbs of Epsom salts dissolved into it. Pretty awesome.  I hadn’t heard of anything like this before either… but after the Stairmaster to Hell I could use as much floating as I could get. Here’s one of the float pods.
All in all, the hour of floating was super relaxing. I didn’t fall asleep, which apparently happens for some folks and is completely safe to do so. Danielle and I, on the other hand, did a similar thing where we’d touch the edge of the pod and start counting how long it’d take to float to the other side.
Day 8 – Mountain Biking at Moose Mountain in Alberta

Day 8 – Mountain Biking at Moose Mountain in Alberta

by | Jul 26, 2017 | Adventure, Mountain Biking, Wedding Adventure

After our long wedding day adventure, we decided we’d sleep in the next day ( of course ).
I made pancakes and we sipped on some coffee. Lounged around in the hammock and got ready for our first day of riding in Canada. As you can see we brought a little bit of the east coast with us on this trip (ie. vermont maple syrup and our Gimme coffee mugs).
We knew we wanted to get a ride in – but not quite sure where. We read about Moose Mt. on the Trail Forks app. It’s about an hour from the campground back towards Calgary near the town of Bragg Creek. After reading some trail reviews we decided to check it out.
Pneuma was the trail we decided to climb in order to get to some of the fun stuff up top. Not a bad climb. Steep and rooty in sections and gets rockier as you get closer to the top. We saw some smoke in the distance. After running into another rider who had mentioned there were forest fires in the next mountain range over. Scary stuff.
Once we finished the climb we noticed a sign that listed a few trail closures due to maintenance. Of , ourse all of the trails we wanted to ride (ie. Shaft) was on the “no go” list. BUTTTT….we decided to ride it anyway, figuring we may be able to go around the maintenance area. When in Rome right?
Man, was it fun. Bermy, fast FUN.  Cooper seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.
THEN we heard voices further down the trail. UH OH. Caught red-handed going down a trail we shouldn’t be.
So we turned back and hiked our bikes straight back up the trail. Probably the WORST hike-a-bike I’ve ever experienced. It took us about 45 minutes to get to the top. The best part was as we approached the top, some other dude came ripping down the trail. We should have just asked for forgiveness rather than climbing all the way back up. But that’s the price you pay for breaking the rules! Lesson-learned.
We headed back down Pneuma and turned onto a super fun, flowy, jumpy, machine-built trail called 7-47. Definitely worth it though we noticed Cooper was getting pretty tired so decided to call it a day. When we had arrived, the parking lot had  1-2 other vehicles but upon returning it was now filled with at least 20!  We spoke to a few locals who mentioned you’ll find a lot of people from Calgary ride here after work and on weekends since it’s only 30 minutes away.
Overall Moose Mt. is a neat little trail system that we’d love to explore some more one day. The nearest town, Bragg Creek, looked really cute as well. Though not many things are open during the week. We did, however, find a nice little family restaurant called, Bragg’s Corner Kitchen, for food/drinks before heading back towards Canmore.
Day 7 – Our Emotional Wedding

Day 7 – Our Emotional Wedding

by | Jul 25, 2017 | Wedding Adventure

****All of the amazing photos in this post are by our friend, Danielle Coons, and her hubs. Check out her site here. <3
OK.  If you don’t know what an “emotional wedding” is, that’s okay. It’s literally a term we made up. We also had a “legal wedding” – which you can read about here. The idea was that we’d tie the knot legally and then exchange our own vows on our first Airstream adventure (a trip we’d been planning for quite a while).
In the morning, I took my notepad and headed to the picnic table outside where I could have some privacy to finish writing vows. Turns out it’s really difficult trying to sum up all of the feelings you have for another person and structure these thoughts into cohesive sentences…
Late morning, Jay dropped me off in Canmore for my hair/makeup appointment at The Loft. Danielle met me there – coffee in tow. (I told you she was amazing right?)
Afterward, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to the campground where we planned on doing a first look outside of our Airstream.  Even though we were doing this tiny little private thing… the nerves still crept up on me!
There he stood, my handsome husband.
GAAAHH – amirite?
Next, we headed to Banff to grab flowers and we were on our way to Moraine Lake to exchange our vows.
During our scouting the day before, we found a quiet little trail that was away from the main touristy area. It was a really beautiful path that led to a brook surrounded by a tall forest of pines and moss.  It was exactly what we wanted.
When we began exchanging vows – we laughed and cried and laughed some more. It was one of the most special moments of our lives. Uninterrupted, just us and Danielle of course. She was shooting from a distance – we barely noticed she was there.
Danielle asked for Jay’s phone afterward and recorded 30 seconds of audio from the spot we were standing. In the audio recording, you can hear the breeze, the brook. She called it our marriage soundtrack and encouraged us to listen to is whenever we’re having a tough time or want to remember this day.
The rest of the day was quite a blur. Danielle and hubby, Bill, were able to capture amazing shots as we hiked around Moraine Lake and Lake Louise. We literally couldn’t walk 5 ft before seeing another amazing vista.
By the end of the day, things started to get goofy…  and we were all getting hungry. We stopped in Banff for dinner on the way back to Canmore.  There were only a handful of restaurants still open so we decided Banff Avenue Brewing was just what we needed.
Nothing like some poutine, champagne, and free shots to end your emotional wedding day!
Photography: All of the amazing photos in this post are by our friend, Danielle Coons, and her hubs. Check out her site here. <3
Hair + Makeup: The Loft Hair Studio (in Canmore)
Florals: Forget me not flowers (in Banff)
Dress: Anna Campbell, Purchased in Portland Oregon at Brides for a Cause, Altered by Layne Dann at Gee June Bridal
Day 6 – Location Scouting near Moraine Lake

Day 6 – Location Scouting near Moraine Lake

by | Jul 24, 2017 | Adventure, Wedding Adventure

Meet Danielle and Bill.
They’re not only amazing photographers… they’re our good friends and they’ve traveled all the way here to capture our special emotional wedding and to do some sight-seeing.
Danielle and I have been friends for close to 10 years. We met way back when we both worked at the same advertising agency in Scranton. The rest is history.
It’s hard to explain Danielle in words… but if I had to try my best it’d go something like this…
She’s the most captivating, lovely person you’ll ever meet. She can light up a room. Really… she can.  She’s energetic, funny and just beautiful inside and out. She’s also really freakin’ good at what she does and incredibly passionate about each and every wedding she shoots. She’s got a heart and a soul that’s genuine.
That’s why Jay and I feel so honored to have her and her husband Bill here with us. Not only be photographers and witnesses but to be there for us as support as we enter into this next chapter in life.
SO – that brings us to today! Location scouting day. We knew with Canada’s 150th, the parks would be busy, but we didn’t expect it to be THIS busy.
Luckily, Danielle came prepared! She was in contact with a couple (also wedding photographers) who had just eloped in the area. They were able to give us enough intel on the locations we were interested in and shared which spots would be less busy and what was really worth the wait.
I’d say the wait was totally worth it.
Here’s Moraine Lake. AM I RIGHT?  If you scramble on the rock outcropping, you can crop out the many of the other tourists vying for a similar shot.
In order to get this shot of Jay, I had to crouch down and angle my camera just right. You’d almost think we had the whole place to ourselves!
After a long day of location scouting, we grabbed dinner at Park Distillery in Banff and headed back to the campground to rest up for the next day.
Day 5 – Helllloooooo Canada!

Day 5 – Helllloooooo Canada!

by | Jul 23, 2017 | Adventure, RV-life, Wedding Adventure

We made it folks!

We drove a total of 37 hours and made it to the campground in Bow Valley Provincial Park. We’ll be using this campground as a base camp for the next week as we travel around to Banff National Park.

After a celebratory beer, we tried deploying the Zip Dee awning with a little too much force and ended up bending one of the awning arms… Oopsie. The things we do for shade!

Luckily our friends, Danielle and Bill, had just arrived witness the mayhem.

We knew we either had to bend it back (unlikely) OR saw a piece of the arm off so that we could at the very least put it away.

After about 30 minutes of problem-solving and frustration, we ventured into Canmore to grab dinner at the Grizzly Paw Brewery. We were put on the waitlist and decided to kill time at this fun little bar next door called Where the Buffalo Roam – a Hunter S. Thompson themed bar. Great drinks and hilarious server – I guess it’s what you’d expect from a Hunter S. Thompson themed bar. As if things couldn’t get any better, Jay spotted a double rainbow from where we were seated. After which the entire street turned into “Double Rainbow mania” (as Jay put it). People running out into the street snapping photos on their iPhones. People yelling out of car windows, “It’s a DOUBLE RAINBOW”.

I was able to snap a shot myself before one of the rainbows completely faded away.

We like to think it was a good sign – seeing as tomorrow we’ll be scoping out locations for our emotional vow exhange.

Until tomorrow!

Day 4 – Off to Montana

Day 4 – Off to Montana

by | Jul 22, 2017 | Adventure, Wedding Adventure

Janette was an amazing host. She had coffee ready and made us a delicious breakfast before we hit the road. She even gave us a handful of dried lavender. This will come in handy when our trailer starts to accumulate a few sweaty sets of bike clothes.
Her dog, Girdy, and Cooper got a long nicely and was good for Cooper to get out some energy before our big push to Northern Montana.
Roughly 10 hours.
It’s quite amazing to see how vast the west really is. I’ve only really flown to where I needed to go out west – this being my first big road trip. I find it amazing that you can see for miles and miles. I feel sorta naked. No trees to hide behind!
As Dorothy once said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore”… or are we?
Our route took us straight through Billings, Montana. We decided we could use a quick break and found a great little coffee place called MoAV. Super hip interior, friendly service, and GOOD COFFEE. They even allowed us to bring Cooper inside.
 
We got some coffee for the road and are now planning to push to Great Falls, MT, and hopefully, find a Walmart parking lot to crash in before our push to Alberta!