The Great Canadian Road Trip: Elk Island National Park

Canada has lots of amazing landscape and beautiful scenery.  As we've been following the Trans-Canada highway west we have been enjoying a lot of what the Great White North has to offer.

Fortune has found us camping at Elk Island National Park for a couple days.

I spent some time exploring the park solo, and in the company of my wife and some of our Scavenger friends.  Ron and Liz have been carpooling with us across the country, and Chrystajoined us at the park for the afternoon.

The park is amazingly photogenic, and we all, being photographers, took full advantage.  We were also on vacation, so we did a lot of "sitting and enjoying the scenery" as well. Often these two goals intermingled quite conveniently.

The canoe on a lake is an iconic Canadian view, so it was great to get some shots of that.  The sunset in the background didn't hurt either.
The sunset cause this awesome orange hue in the sky and the water.  This particular sunset is going down in my history books as one of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever had the pleasure of watching.

One last shot for the evening of... another canoe. Cause: canoes.

Having experienced the sunsets that Elk Island had on offer, Liz and I decided we wanted to sample the sunrise as well.  We got up at 5AM, only to find that it was raining. We figured we'd only get this one chance at a sunrise shoot in the park, so we headed out anyway. Besides, there might be wildlife along the way.

Our goal was a mile down a pathway, which would take us to the edge of Lake Ashotin, the main lake in the park.  The rain was hit and miss, so we managed to grab a few shots in between the showers.

Damp, but pretty.  

The walk back turned out to have some interesting shots as well.

Elk Island is home to a herd of wood bison.  They roam free in the park, except in the campground.  Since the sunrise lacked the promise of its setting counterpart, we headed off back down the trail to the Geovan of Destiny.

Our goal is to track down that elusive herd of bison.

Spoiler alert: we find them.  But you'll have to wait until next post to see the pictures.