The last two national parks in Canada 🇨🇦

From Edmonton, we drove to Elk Island National Park. It is about 45 minutes away and promises a large animal population. There are bison, moose, elk - a native deer species -, white-tailed deer, beavers, and approximately 250 species of birds. Well, on that day, it was probably too hot for the animals and they preferred to stay in the undergrowth. We saw a bison before and one after the park entrance, and otherwise, we saw some of the birds and many beaver dams, but none of the other animals. But there were plenty of animal tracks, so they do exist in the park 😉. We walked several shorter hiking trails, and apparently, a herd of bison was ahead of us. Judging by the 💩, the herd was quite large and must have passed by just before us. Fortunately, they turned right, we turned left. I have to admit, I wasn't comfortable with the idea of ​​being face to face with one - or even more - of these giants 👀. When we got out of the park, we saw them. Several huge herds of buffaloes. I think the beasts were trying to fool us 😂.

As mentioned earlier, we then went to the rodeo in Calgary. A separate report will follow on this.

The conclusion of our first month in Canada was the Waterton Lakes National Park. It is quite small, and on the other side of the border, it continues into Glacier National Park. We had been to Waterton three years ago and we almost liked it the best back then. Last summer, there was a pretty big forest fire that destroyed almost 50% of the accessible part of the park. The consequences are clearly visible. It is hard to hike because most of the trails are still closed for safety reasons. However, the park is still beautiful. And fire is a part of nature and gives vegetation the opportunity to renew itself. Both the town of Waterton and the famous Prince of Wales Hotel were saved from the fire, so we stayed there for a long time. There is direct access to the lake in many places, you can walk along the lake, sit everywhere, the children play on the shore, and some brave souls even go swimming. The water was supposed to be quite cold. The promenade has been redone and overall it is very relaxed there. Besides, the weather was fantastic, and we enjoyed the day there very much.