Here’s a card from Canada! This is a wintry view of the Canadian Rockies (or Canadian Rocky Mountains), which runs along the western side of the country through the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. The Rocky Mountains make up a mountain range that goes all the way through the United States, traversing through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado (and a little bit of Utah and New Mexico). The entire length is about 3,000 km – yeah, it’s big! As such, you will find no shortage of opportunities to hike, rock climb, raft, ski, and tour in one of the seven national parks in the Canadian segment of the mountain range. This one here is a view of Banff National Park, the oldest national park in Canada and a UNESCO World Heritage site. With an area of over 6,000 square km, it’s well-known for its abundance of outdoor activities plus the two focal points on this card – the stunning lakes and the profound mountains. This Lake here is Moraine Lake, a glacier-fed lakes whose color becomes more vibrant in the summer. This is because when the glaciers melt, the run-off goes into the lake – that’s why it’s glacier-fed! Yum!(?) The run-off brings along very fine pieces of rock called rock flour (no, it’s not baking more mountains, though that’d be cool), and the light refracting off of it causes us to see such a deep blue-green color (refraction is like reflection, but instead of light bouncing off the surface, it goes through it). The mountains in the background are known as the Valley of the Ten Peaks, or the Seven Sisters, and the entirety of the scene is known as the “Twenty Dollar View”. The reason? That same view was on twenty dollar bills in Canada between 1969 and 1979. But boy is it priceless! Thank you lots for sending me this awesome card!
