While doing research for Thailand, it suddenly dawned on me that one of the big lantern release happens for New Years, when thousands of lanterns are lit with flames and are launched into the sky. I’ve been wanting to see that (despite how environmentally unfriendly and potentially hazardous it is) since I first saw photos of it years ago. And we will be in Chiang Mai for it this year.

I don’t normally get excited about New Year’s festivities, but this is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences, kind of like what 2012 New Year’s Eve was for me in Sydney. Now, I can’t wait. 😀

Tonight at dinner, I spent almost the entire evening talking to one of my colleagues who is obsessed with national parks. She asked me a lot about our time in Banff, especially since it’s been high on her list of places to see. Last year, she visited both Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, and I was completely in awe that she had visited Glacier National Park; it’s so far north in Montana that it’s actually not that far away from Calgary where we just were, and flight-wise, it’s not easy to get to at all. She told me that while she enjoyed both parks, she and her boyfriend spent far more time in Glacier and loved it more because of its scenery and that it had far fewer people than Yellowstone. At times, it seemed practically dead, she said. I love hearing things like this. What it ends up meaning is that if we go, it will also have fewer people, and we don’t have a problem with less hoards of people.

I also just love hearing about people going to places that are slightly off the beaten track. So many people I’ve spoken with had no idea what Banff was, and while almost every American knows what Yosemite or Yellowstone is, so few people are aware of what Glacier National Park is (I wasn’t even aware of it or where it was in the U.S. until earlier this year when I was doing national park research for Utah). After reading about some national park designations, some are as new as getting their official designations in the 1980s — that’s so recent!

My national park and hiking obsession will continue. I can’t wait for the next one.

Coming back to the city after days spent hiking with views of endless mountains and the fresh smell of trees and clean air is always a bit of an adjustment. The smell of hiking in Banff kind of stayed with me, and even on the flight back to New York City, I was thinking about how incredible the scents were there. It seemed like every few minutes during a walk or a hike up a switchback that I was inhaling some beautiful, clean and new scent.

This morning on my way to work, it was brutally hot and humid, and it was only 9 am. On the walk to the train, I could smell the lovely New York garbage smell wafting towards me. Clearly on 78th street where I usually turn off, it was rubbish collection day, and so the entire street was lined with endless large black bags filled with trash. What a contrast to the smells I was trying to remember and savor.

Tonight after catching on The Daily Show, I spent the evening researching hikes we could potentially do with my parents when we are back in the Bay Area for Labor Day weekend. Mount Tamalpais State Park and Point Reyes National Seashore are just over the Golden Gate Bridge, which means they are just an hour away for us to hike and smell fresh, crisp air again. Now, my only challenges are a) finding hikes that are not too strenuous (these have the potential of having my mother squat on a rock and refuse to continue onward), and b) grappling with the fact that in order to get to these places, I need to get over my anxiety of crossing the Golden Gate Bridge once again.

But I guess we need to face our fears to continue living, so I just have to be strong and think positively about the memories of Ed and the fact that I know he wouldn’t want me to cry.

We haven’t had any real “glamour” meals on this trip, as most of the food we’ve been eating has been either at the national park or random restaurants in the town of Banff. But one thing that has been certain is that the bread and dairy in this province, if not this entire country, have been phenomenal. We got a liter of regular whole milk from a supermarket in Banff the other night, and the milk had a distinct aftertaste that I’ve never really encountered back home, anywhere in the U.S. The bread we’ve had, in the form of “complimentary” bread with the elk stew we had at a park cafe, smelled aged and yeasty, while the cassoulet linseed bread yesterday night in Calgary was light and fluffy, yet hearty and almost “meaty,” if that makes any sense. It had heft and a great mouthbfeel, as well as a nuanced, complex flavor that screamed, “I’m not shitty supermarket American bread; I have character!” And this morning’s breakfast at Blue Star Diner just topped my Canadian bread expectations: my thick slices of sourdough toast that put together my breakfast “sammy” were so good that I didn’t want my breakfast to end. Ever. The flavor, the taste, the texture — it was all so good that even if the cost were double, I probably wouldn’t have cared much.

I read that Canada is known for having very heavy, hearty breakfasts, which I suppose makes sense since it is a very cold region given how north it is. Many items on the menu are not for those watching their waist lines — popular items across breakfast and brunch places include pulled pork eggs benedict, duck confit with poached eggs and hash, and pretty much every fancy meat you can think of combined with eggs any way with endless potatoes in countless methods of being cooked. When people think of countries known for their gastronomy, they oftentimes think of places like France, Italy, Spain, or Japan. Canada is pretty much never on that list based on travel features I’ve read. But I would argue that food is pretty notable here, especially given how culturally diverse Canada is, and their creativity with breakfasts and the care they take with raising grass-fed and finished cows for dairy and beef should be admired, if not replicated.

After having only two meals in Calgary and being blown away by the quality of the ingredients at both, all I want to do now is come back to Canada and eat. And see the rest of the Canadian Rockies. And maybe live for a little bit — if just during the summer.

The first two big hiking and outdoors trips I’d ever done were to Marin Headlands when I was 10 years old for an overnight school trip in elementary school, and then to Olympic National Park in Washington state on an outdoor education trip via my middle school when I was 14. Outside of these trips, I’d never been exposed much to the “outdoors.” My parents never appreciated hiking or visiting national parks, so they were never going to take me. And when friends’ parents offered to take me on snow sport outings to Tahoe, my mom always refused to let me go. She was overprotective, to say the least.

When I look back on my childhood, those are two trips I always remember fondly as happy moments of my life. I was with good friends, my parents weren’t there, and I was just there to take in my surroundings and all these new and foreign experiences. I think that these trips helped me develop a desire to do more hiking, visit more national parks, and pursue new outdoor recreational activities.

Yesterday, after about seven hours of hiking, we sat and relaxed at the Fairmont Lake Louise bar in Banff National Park, and we chatted with a man who came with his wife and two children from New Jersey. They love the outdoors, and in this same year, also visited Bryce and Zion National Park in Utah as we just did. He said they did many hikes, some more strenuous like the Lake Agnes tea house hike overlooking Lake Louise, and their children, ages 10 and 12, really enjoyed them. He said they exposed their kids to a lot of outdoor activities, so they were used to be being outside and active.

That’s what I want for our future kids. I want them to appreciate both urban city life and the outdoors, and to be exposed to hiking in natural, beautiful places like Banff from a young age. It’s true that my parents never took me to national parks or hiking in places like Yosemite or Olympic National Park, but they did pay for me to have the opportunities to do those two outdoors trips that led to my appreciation of nature and love of hiking. I still had the opportunities in a different way. And I’m grateful for that. I hope to be able to take it a step further with my own children and participate with them. Because don’t we all want our kids to have more than what we have been privileged to have?

I hate waking up early, and I definitely do not do it naturally. My friends say I am a morning person because they know I wake up to do weekday morning workouts before work, and they also know that when traveling, Chris and I wake up early to start our days as soon as possible. But that doesn’t mean I’m naturally a morning person; it just means I have realized that waking up early means I am maximizing daylight hours, and when traveling, I want as much daylight as possible to soak in the day and the place that I am temporarily in.

From a hiker and photographer’s perspective, early morning is the best time to be out: the parking lots at national parks and trails will be fairly empty, the crowds thus will be lesser, the temperature will be lower (more important in hot climates like Arizona), and the light will be best for photographs because of its softness and the position of the sun. The sun’s light creeping up in the morning here brushes against the tops of mountains, creating an illuminating orangish-red hue that you will never, ever get if you take the exact same photo just an hour later or in the afternoon. Sunset is good, too, but that burning color won’t be there the same way. And who wants to be stuck on top of a mountain after dark when you climb down once finished with taking your epic photos?

We didn’t get to Lake Moraine until 7:30 this morning (that’s later than we wanted, because again, I’m not a morning person and struggled to get up), so the orange hues I wanted to see were gone. We only got them during the drive to the park when seeing the mountains we approached. But one thing we did get to enjoy was the absolute stillness of the lake. Every reflection of the mountain, the logs, the clouds, and the trees could be seen, and it was so stunning. I’m a little obsessed with water reflections; I can’t explain why. I just think natural water is amazing, and when the clouds or the mountains are reflected off of it, it’s gorgeous — natural beauty in its quietest moment. The lakes will only be still early in the morning and later in the evening around sunset, so it’s another reason to get up early to enjoy this still moment. We’ll be chasing a lot of reflections on this trip — we won’t be here long, so we need to soak it all in.