Ahhhh, We Had to Come to the City

We have been in three major National Parks in the last week. We have seen a few deer, a few grouse, and two mountain goats. We have not seen a single bighorn sheep, caribou, moose, or bear. Today we left Jasper National Park, headed for Kamloops. It is the biggest city we have been to since Spokane. All along the way today we saw countless road signs telling us to watch for moose and deer. We didn't see a single one.

We came to Kamloops. We saw this sign.

Sure enough, just after the sign, we saw a few on the hillside.

We continued on to our hotel. After we got settled, Kim and I decided to go see if we could find more sheep. We went back to where we had seen them first. Of course, they weren't there. At the next opportunity, we turned right onto a side road. We were able to slow down and look up the hillside. Kim spotted a couple, so we pulled over. Dad had given us his camera. The bighorns were quite high on the hillside. Dad's humongous lens (50-500 meters) was still in the car. I pulled the beast out and put it on the camera. Kim got out the tripod. 

At first it wouldn't take the photo. The screen said at the 500 meter distance, the f-stop had to be on the biggest number. Okay, I could do that! Then, it took the photos just fine. Here's a few that I have cropped.

A female?

After we put the big camera away, we followed the road up to Lake Paul. We didn't see any more sheep (apparently, we got too far away from town). The Provincial Park at the lake was nice.

After Kim and I came back into town, we scoped out a restaurant for dinner (Mexican). When we arrived at the restaurant, there were a couple of guys playing guitar and singing in the restaurant. There were envelopes on each of the tables telling the musicians' story. They were two cyclists (Santiago Sarmiento and Gustavo Nemitz) from Brazil, riding from Ushuaia, Argentina to Alaska. Their ride is called the Ecovuelta Project Tour. I should have asked to take their photo, but I didn't think about it. They were nice guys. I told them I want to do the Pan-Am Hwy. They said I should do it for sure!

Outside the restaurant, the tree trunks were wrapped with sweaters.

We head back into the US tomorrow. At least we finally saw some bighorn sheep. We just had to come to the city!