The arrival of morning of Monday, May 19th, 2025 meant it would be the day we headed home.

Mica Mountain Lodge & log cabins was a fabulous getaway but it really was time to go home. After we had breakfast, cleaned up and got our stuff packed away, I took a few photos of our home away from home for the past few days. It was small, but cozy and I think my laptop screen is bigger than the TV, not that we watched much of that.

We drove up to the house to say goodbye to Elke & Jürgen and for Lynda, the horses, before we hit the highway.

I planned on heading back the same way we came but was hoping highway 93a would be open so I could see if the payphone I knew of had survived the fire. The road was open from the north side but it was closed at the 15km mark so you still couldn’t drive down to Athabasca Falls.

I decided to drive down it a bit to look around.

The phone hadn’t survived.

I needed to dodge an old guy looking for the geocache listed there. I had my camera out and no interest in him but he still insisted on getting in my way.

We turned around and went back up the hill to get some overview photos. I noticed another payphone corpse and stopped to get a photo of it and the surrounding area.

The waterpipe snaking down the hillside was pretty obvious with no trees to hide in so I decided to incorporate it.

We went in search of a few more photos before we had to make the long drive home.

I never took any more photos in the next 5 or so hours it took us to get home. My last image feels a bit like a battlefield after an intense fight. I know fire is an important part of forest renewal, and I’m excited to be able to go back and check on the progress over the next few years. But, it does make me a bit sad seeing it in it’s current state.