Day 36: Hanceville

After a night in the warm stable and a delicious breakfast with home-made jams, we deal with our plans for the next few days. The weather forecasts for Jasper and Banff are pretty bad, rain, snow showers, freezing temperatures and this at the end of August! But it does not seem to be unusual. Irinel tells us that they can get frost in Hanceville soon too. So we decide to book accommodations in the parks for three nights (from Thursday to Sunday). This proves to be not easy, since it's peak season and weekend. But after 2-3 hours we found some accommodations.

For lunch, Juri makes homemade crepes. Then we go for a walk down to the river valley. The farm is located between two reserves of First Nations. We are getting equipped with two bear bells and the instruction to being noisy. Juri told us the previous evening, it's most likely that a bear and/or a mountain lion are within a radius of 500 meters.

The ground is quite sandy and there are Douglas firs that are as deep-rooted as they are tall. The path leads down into the valley through woody and bushy terrain. There we make our way over thorns and burrs towards the river. A wild beauty and somehow the way you imagine the wild west.

In fact, the stories of the Wild West, which we Europeans know quite well, are all originated in this area.

On the way back from the river we hear a sort of grunt or barking to the back of us and can watch how a black bear slides down from a birch tree and then runs across the meadows. Obviously we disturbed him. For Brigitte the first black bear encounter. Great!

Climbing up the hill is getting pretty hot then. The rest of the afternoon Wolle has some work to do and Brigitte is reading in the Tourist's guide.

After a jointly prepared dinner, Juri and Wolle take a bath in the hot tub and enjoy the view. Brigitte is tired already and therefore heading to bed.

The farm certainly is a hell lot of work, but the two of them have also realized a lifelong dream and we are very impressed and extremely grateful to be able to get an insight into their life here.