nature out here....

Photopost which doesn´t need explanation just enjoy the pictures from what I´ve seen during my stay! Every now and then it was possible for me and a few friends to experience the landscape in the Rocky Mountains National Park. Even though I wasn´t able to do the big hikes up Cascade or Rundle mountain which is probably why I don´t have the best condition and the trails are closing at some point of the year, there is still a lot of beautiful places to visit!
For example Lake Louise or Lake Moraine which I´ve been to several times or the Johnston Canyon or even a few kilometers around Banff you can find quite a lot of scenic locations which are mostly easy to access and it´s even attractive to go there and just hang out for 1-2 hours and explore.

One time Rica and I were Hitchhiking which was on of those perfect days where nature made you feel really grateful and happy!

Our actual plan was to go to Peyto Lake which is quite far away and as I haven´t hitchhiked before I was really excited about it. When we started at the highway close to Banff my personal wish to go a part of the trip with a truly Canadian Truck got fulfilled and the adventure started. The guy who took us was nice but creepy though. He let us off the Truck kind a in the middle of nowhere and we still had a decent amount of kilometers to go but we kept on walking and after around 30 min another car stopped by to bring us to Peyto Lake.

We hiked up the mini trail and had the most amazing view over the radiant blue lake and his scenery, it let us hung out there for quite a while and to see the weather changing so quickly was the most interesting! From sunny to rainy with a beautiful rainbow over the Lake to my first snowflakes in a while. The way back was nothing to sneeze at either! We stopped at Bow Lake and an older married couple dropped us off close to Lake Louise, at that point we started making funny signs to the truck drivers on the other side and they rang their horns for us every time. That was a lot of fun!
The other outstanding landscape I´ve seen is Tunnel Mountain during sunrise! Getting up super super early was quite a pain in the ass but soooo

worth it, especially when you are having good company. Everything was chaotic as usual and we were quite late due to the fact that Maxime was still drunk and we had to find him in his own staff accommodation :).
Our delay made us ran up the mountain and a 45 min hike turned into a 20 min sprint - It was unbelievable physically demanding, I almost threw up half way but we made it in time and saw the sun rise over Bow Valley which was literally one of the most epic moments here living in Banff National Park!

Last but not least and not to forget to mention: Johnston Canyon.

Finally after 8 month of messaging and chatting on Facebook I met Pawel who picked up my suitcase in

Montreal to travel through whole Canada with it and hand it over here in Banff! Unfortunately I have to admit my suitcase must have seen more of Canada than I actually did! Crazy! ( He is again traveling without me with a friend from Germany who moved to Lethbridge recently. I´m probably not gonna see him again, but it seems to be an appropriate lifestyle for a suitcase though.) Nonetheless Johnston Canyon is always worth a journey. Every season is special in it´s own way. Imaging those waterfalls as a frozen wall. Just let me say it´s like that, I`ve never been hypnotized of nature before! However, we hiked the entire trail and also saw the paint pots which is an about a 3,5 hour hike in total. Again I was exhausted and I should still start to work out to get into a better condition and shape but I just can´t help myself and after a 12-14 hour day you don´t feel like running around. After about 11 month in Canada I gained quite a few kilos which makes me feel really bad but what can you do against when all the food you get is bathing in grease before actually ending up on your plate!

Back in Canada - Hello Banff!!

What can I say about Banff, actually I didn´t know that much about it when we first arrived! It´s a small town in a Canadian National Park - so far so good! Tim, a friend of mine whom I´ve met a few times during my stay in North America, lived and worked in Banff and told me that he was able to save up some cash for his further travels whilst he was working as a server in a Hotel. That was pretty much the reason for me to go there and try copying his actions.
The actual plan for my stay in Canada was different from the beginning but since I left Montreal, the desire for having an uncomplicated life with a job which wasn´t too overloaded with responsibilities and crazy hours was big enough to downgrade my life and do what a normal backpacker would do.

Just to explain what I´m talking about: at some point back in Montreal I kind a had the feeling of missing out the best part of traveling, Life was still really serious, I was more alone than i wanted to be and somehow it felt exactly like the life I already had in Germany. So what was the point of being in Canada then? I wanted to change something, make a difference, find out what I want and who I am. This journey was supposed to be my personal puzzle and I expected the little pieces gather together from time to time. Even though I had an awesome time in Montreal and met amazing people who impressed and inspired me in many different ways, I knew I needed to change something to find what i was longing for.

On our first day we started handing out resumes and the first hotel we´ve been to, hired us right away. We got the offer to work as housekeepers and I thought that is exactly what I wanted to experience a less stressful and enjoyable being.
So I decided to work in Housekeeping. As you can imagine after already one week I was so unhappy with my decision that I started looking for something else. Even though the people we met at this Hotel were the greatest and I´m still friends with them.
Pretty much 1 week later I got hired as a Banquet Server in another Hotel. No more cleaning toilettes and other peoples shit OH YAY! Working in Housekeeping was really the worst and I have the most amount of respect for people who have to do it. Furthermore I´m

gonna make sure they get decent tip if I´ll ever stay at a Hotel again. So that was it, having an uncomplicated life. Somehow I knew already it´s probably not gonna work out the way I imagined it. My first 2 weeks of working were horrible. We worked 13 days in a row and I had a unbearable and lasting flu which I was fighting against exactly till yesterday. Because of the crazy hours we had to work, it kept on coming back every week. So hopefully it´s over now. Everyone had seen a doctor and taking antibiotics to break the circle. That´s pretty much everything about my second start ( the backpacking way of life) in Canada or even call it the first step out of my personal comfort zone! Before I was only doing what I´ve always done, at least I thought so. Reminiscing the last 4 month  I have to admit some things are forgotten, some things disappear. But all in all you can hardly call it a tradegy or maybe you can ;)

last stop - yellowstone national park!

Finally. 3 month after we arrived in Banff I´m starting to write the last blogpost about our road trip through the US. It took me quite a while to finish that last post and to be honest probably I didn´t want all to be over which is pretty much happening the second i´m finally going to press the button. Besides that, it almost feels unreal and like a dream which could have happened but actually never did. So much occured in the meantime, good things and bad things. I´m gonna tell you more about that in the next post as I promised myself to start over, especially because we began planning the next travel destinations and the flights are already booked! PURE EXCITEMENT!

Yellowstone National Park was my favorite stop in the entire 5 weeks! It´s actually a shame that I can´t remember that much of it anymore. Basically I don´t even know where we´ve slept the night before or after but I still see all those colors and structures in front of my inner eye! After one night of thinking about the trip I realized we have been to Salt Lake City the day before :D What can I say about SLC hmmmm... pretty much nothing but there is a lot of religious stuff happening and as far as I know it´s the american capital for Mormons. We visited the Mormons Museum and it was kind a creepy to be honest. I´d say it was by far the most boring stop on the whole trip and I don´t think someone of us is planing on going back there ever again ( Sure, SLC can be nice but it was just not my cup of tea! Sorry) .

Back to Yellowstone National Park: It was just so remarkable and inspiring and definitely an experience to never forget. This National Park is so heavily versatile in different ways.
You can explore the most beautiful ponds which smells like

rotten eggs but are actually the most amazing colored water holes you can imagine or you´ll find lots of geyser. Small ones and bigs ones which are breaking out from time to time or steaming all day long! Lucky us, that we got to see the biggest and most impressive one exploding and spreading a decent amount of steam.
Even the wildlife is pretty amazing and we ´ve seen a gang of elks, the boss of them with massive antlers basically chased our car when we crossed them to protect his "Ladies". Or we had to wait for a buffalo to leave the street and of course there were birds, squirrels and goats.
Waterfalls are pretty impressive though!

Our last stop in the Park were the limestone stairs which has been my favorite when it comes to pastel colors and structures - such an inspiring place to see! OBVIOUSLY!

It´s freakin´amazing how nature is working and what results are emerging within a few thousand years. To see this spectacular sight made me feel really grateful - the world is such a beauty which deserves and should be treated better in every conceivable way.

This entire roadtrip gave me a new way of seeing the world and made me richer in many different ways. I´ve learnt a lot about nature, the people and for sure I got to understand a little better the american way of life and their way of thinking. It was a lifetime lasting experience which I´ll never forget about and probably gonna do again in a couple of years because we still missed out on a few things and it was just to awesome to not come back :).