One of the trails we took at Waterton Lakes National Park was from Lower Waterton Lake to Middle Waterton Lake and then through to Upper Waterton Lake.

Much of the trail was through prairie grasslands with increasing forest density as we came closer to the mountains.

In the photo above you can spot the iconic Prince of Wales hotel in the far distance. It is an historic building that was erected in honour of Prince Edward’s – he later became King Edward VIII and then abdicated a few months later – extended visit to Canada in 1927. Unfortunately he never made it to his namesake hotel.

We saw a couple of bears on the other side of the lake above and immediately changed our route. We admired them from afar. They were play fighting and in and out of the water but I wasn’t able to get a picture of them because they strolled among the bushes and shadows and I couldn’t seem to get a good capture.

We sat in the Parks Canada red muskoka chairs to admire the Middle Waterton Lake. Every national park has at least one set of these red chairs placed at advantageous viewpoints.

The photo above shows the little channel – very quaintly called “the Bosphorus” – that connects Middle and Upper Waterton Lakes.

In some of the pictures I’ve posted you can see evidence of a forest fire. The fire was started by lightning in 2017 and destroyed huge swaths of forest in the park. It is recovering well though and there are many small pine, spruce and aspen trees growing among the remains of the previous forest.

Happy Wednesday.