Waterton Lakes, Canada

      In the early stages of planning a month long family trip West as far as Yellowstone NP did not include much north of YNP. Since the movie Dances with Wolves my wife has always wanted to experience Montana first hand. One day during the trip planning stages VicMom asked if we were going to Glacier NP, she had heard how beautiful the park was. So, I began looking into continuing quite a ways farther north into Montana and Glacier NP. Most times we stay at Best Western hotels to build up travel points, and that’s where the story takes on an unexpected silver lining.

   I checked on Best Westerns’ accomodations near or in Glacier NP, much to my surprise one overnight was $385 ! Turns out the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is the union of Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada and Glacier National Park in the United States. The huge Upper and Lower Waterton lake straddles the US and Canadian border. Both parks are declared Biosphere Reserves by UNESCO and their union as one of only 79 World Heritage Sites in North America.

Prince of Wales Hotel

   While checking the area for other overnight accomodations I came across a photo of the Prince of Wales Hotel. This story-book hotel is perched on the Wharton Lakes northern most area of the aforementioned International Peace Park nestled among some of the most beautiful scenery one can imagine. The hotel sits just over the Canadian border in southern Alberta. Amazingly, favorable US / Canada exchange rates allowed us to stay for $288 per night, with that, we added three extra nights to fully enjoy this amazing hotel and surrounding landscape. The Prince of Wales hotel was built in 1927 as the last of the great railway hotels built by the Great Northern Railroad. The 7 floor hotel has a distinct flavor of the British Crown as seen with interior photos that follow. 

Evening History Lecture

   Afternoon “tea” and evening history lectures about the hotel by rotating hotel staff dressed in appropriate attire made for a rewarding decision to venture further north into Canada. Leaving snow on the ground we would turn south and 3 days later be in 100 degree heat in Zion NP and the Utah landscape. We would meet-up with our youngest son’s family and our only grandson would join us for the next 2 weeks. Our only grandson would turn a teenager towards the end of their stay.

Prince of Wales Hotel Interior

   This month’s image came from directly in front of the hotel overlooking the lake. A dear friend lend me her  5×7″ Deardorff camera for the trip. I set-up in a brisk wind coming across the lake. Ordinarily I would not even try to make an image with the Deardorff and these type windy conditions. It was the last evening of our stay in Waterton and the symmetry of the mountains with the lake adding depth while drawing the viewer into the image was simply too enticing to let the wind steal the photo opp.

   I had sold my 5 x 12″ / 5 x 7″ Chamonix camera so an underlying part of this trip would speak to whether a smaller and lighter Chamonix large format camera was in my future. As it played out the digital capture workflow would replace the larger film camera while offering more mystery and excitement. However, wet processed silver prints would always be my final medium to share my imagery. Significant challenges would follow to get back to a second nature workflow, even the darkroom silver printing would become a challenge working from a digital file. I have come to learn many traditional darkroom techniques to not translate to the digital negative and resulting silver gelatin print.

     The two photos below illustrate the majesty of the mountains and the outdoors have on people. Shortly after I set-up the big camera the 2 photos below unfolded…amazing ! We were later told that many brides choose to have the surrounding area as a backdrop to their special day.

Windy Wedding

Sleeveless wedding dress !

   There were so many interesting things and images that happened during the 42 day trip West.  Scores of images and stories are waiting to be shared. Next month will mark the 100th Story Behind Every Photograph. I’ll share an image and Story beginning with a failed bucket-list location back in 2011, that image and adventure came to fruition last summer. With age comes wisdom, back in the mid nineties my tripod was 3″ from the edge of a 1200 ft cliff overlooking the Colorado River. Pre-dawn and ten miles into the Utah backcountry would find my tripod a full 10″ from a sheer cliff and a 1400 ft drop to the valley floor…check out what lay below that cliff’s edge just in front of my car on April 1st.

somewhere in Utah