Alpine Meadow without too much hiking uphill

One of my big disappointments this summer is that owing to my gimpiness I could not do any serious hiking.  In the last week, we tried to take the bus up to sunshine meadows so that I could get my alpine meadow fix, but due to a combination of cramming in a pile of appointments in the last week and some miss informatoin, we arrived to find out that there was no 2 pm bus and that we'd have to wait until 2:45, and the come down about 2 hours later.  Usually we skip the bus altogether and just hike in and out, but that really was going to be too far for me and I was going to be too slow to hike to where the flowers are abundant in 2 hours.  So we hiked around Banff instead.

I finally got my wildflower fix when we went for a hike around Baker Lake last night - I even got to see some alpinelike wildflowers - such as the paintbrush pictured above.  It was one of those perfect arctic nights when no matter how much other stuff you have to get done, it would be wrong not to get out for a little bit.  It was a mix of sun and cloud, cool and had a stiff enough breeze to render the world bug free and the light was just warm and awesome highlighting the drifts of fireweed growing everywhere around town.