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HISTORY OF BIG SUR COAST

  A new dawn:              Locals had long called for a road along the coast to aid shipwreck victims and improve access to isolated communities.  Construction started in 1919, and 18 years, 32 tonnes of dynamite and 33 bridges later, the Big Sur stretch of California Highway One was complete.               The implausible route, with its myriad twists and turns and dramatic drop-offs, became an instant classic.  The author and painter Henry Miller fled to Big Sur in 1944 and stayed for nearly two decades.  Photographer Edward Weston and Beat Generation bard Jack Kerouac fell under its spell.  By the late 1960’s San Francisco’s counterculture revolution had swept down to Big Sur, and the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell performed on the cliff tops.              ...
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BANFF NATIONAL PARK - CANADA

 Banff National Park:

Banff National Park

            Ice fields and exquisite blue lakes are set amid breathtaking Rocky Mountain scenery.  This is true wilderness country, with wildlife to match.

            Among towering snow-capped mountains, a crown of permanent ice fields – the Waputik, Wapta and Columbia – feed glaciers that push down like huge white tongues against the dark rock.  The meltwater forms torrents that plunge through precipitous gorges and over thundering waterfalls.  Some of that meltwater feeds into glacial lakes, bringing with it a fine dust known as ‘rock flour’.  As sunlight hits the water, the dust absorbs all the colours of the spectrum except blue, which is reflected back from the surface.  This accounts for the many shades of turquoise seen in the lakes here: Moraine Lake, backed by the Valley of Ten Peaks, is a pale teal-blue; Peyto Lake, ringed by forests, is baby-blue; Lake Louise is a milky turquoise. 

              Large animals are commonplace in the park.  Black bears and moose feed on dandelions in spring and berries in autumn; wolves lope along the banks of the Mistaya River; bighorn sheep clamber over jagged cliffs; hoary marmots sunbathe near Peyto Lake.  All of this combines to explain why Banff is the epitome to raw Rocky Mountain beauty.

Where on Earth?

Banff National Park

               Created in 1885, Banff National Park is Canada’s premier national park.  It occupies 2,500 sq miles (6,475 sq km) of the Canadian Rockies.  The town of Banff, in the park’s southeast corner, is 75 miles (120 km) west of Calgary on Trans-Canada Highway 1.
Location: Banff, AB, Canada

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