We can now say that we have also opened the golfing season for ourselves this year – the weekend we went to Waterton Park, we also managed to play 9 holes on one of the most beautiful golf courses – http://golfwaterton.com/

Teeing off at Waterton Lakes Golf course

Deer in the ‘angry trees’

The day before when we went to check out how it is and if we can get a T-time, we stopped for a quick beer at the club. We started talking with the waitress who had just arrived to work there from Calgary and who will spend the whole summer at Waterton. We told her that we had been on 2 long hikes that day, but had not seen a single bear. She responded that most likely all of them had been on the golf course that day – the players had had to skip holes, because the bear just wouldn’t move and one of them had come up almost to the club house. She had a picture to show us as well.

I was very excited because I had wanted to see a bear in nature ever since we had arrived in Waterton. My husband wasn’t very happy at that though, he told me later that the following night he had dreamt of all kinds of ways to fight back bears who had kept coming.

We arrived on the golf course – me excited at playing golf and potentially also meeting bears. The course was breathtakingly beautiful and also quite difficult, so I was not thinking of bears very soon after. There were greens that were at the bottom of a large hill or around the corner of one, the ‘angry trees’ consumed a few balls as well. (Mostly my husband’s, though, I lost only one this time).

Ground squirrel looking around under the tree.

The sun came out and the wind was not too strong – all in all it was a wonderful first 9 holes of the season. We did not see any bears and I was quite bummed about that, but we saw one deer who came out of trees maximum 10 meters away and later there was a ground squirrel who kept looking for something even though we sent balls over it. Must have been so used to the balls flying around both of them.