While in the midst of wedding planning earlier this year, Max and I decided to plan our honeymoon simultaneously as well. We share a love for mountains, trees, and lakes, and wanted to figure out a honeymoon trip that would be relaxing, fun, and relatively close to minimize carbon emissions. Jasper, and the Canadian Rockies in general, have held a special place in my heart for many years. I visited for the first time the summer after graduating college, where I met up with my OG Tumblr friend Angel after 10+ years of internet friendship. When I quit my consulting job in 2018, I spent more than a week in the town of Jasper while writing “You Were Too Young to Remember” and re-questioning what I wanted in my post-college life. After getting back to the west coast from Jasper, I ended a 5 year relationship, went to Hong Kong and China with my mom, got a job at my local film lab, got on Tinder, and met Max about a week after. It felt appropriate, in a year of other major life milestones, to revisit such a magical place in the world.

We originally planned the trip for late October to align with the annual Jasper Dark Sky Festival, but Jasper was very sadly partially burned down during a rapid spreading wildfire this summer, and we weren’t sure if we would make it. We made alternative plans, and so our trip ended up consisting of a train ride to Seattle, another train ride to Vancouver, a flight from Vancouver to Calgary, and 10 days of roadtripping through the parks, which was originally supposed to include Waterton National Park as well. In Vancouver, we realized that Jasper was reopened to the public, so we were able to get one night there and attended a Dark Sky Festival event.

While I typically choose to take photos to document memorable trips, I decided before heading out on our honeymoon that I wanted to make a video. I thought the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 would be an ideal companion, but quite quickly realized that I’m not a filmmaker as much as I am a very casual vlogger, and ended up preferring the DJI Action cam for the vast majority of shots for durability and convenience. I ended up with way too much footage, but I can see making small casual vlog films as a fun way of documenting experiences in the future. I was initially worried that trying to make a video while also taking pictures would be overwhelming or detract from my experience of doing either, but I found short vlogging segments to be fun and compatible with my style of photography. Here’s the video! The editing work is not the cleanest because I got a bit overwhelmed, but I think it’s adequate for the shooting style.

I won’t recount the whole trip, but overall it was a relaxing and memorable trip full of joyous moments. I’m glad we had a break between the wedding and the honeymoon — it was exciting to look forward to and also a well-needed break after a couple of months of chaos at work for the both of us. We had so much fun, even though I did get food poisoning at the end of the trip and we never made it to Waterton. We generally had great luck on our trip (which we don’t often have). We got 14 inches of snow while on a hike and also were at Jasper on the only clear night that week! We did not see any northern lights, but you can’t have it all.

I shot twelve rolls of film while on the trip. The snow was a bit tricky and I should’ve overexposed a little bit more than I did, but I was really happy with the result. It was the most visually inspired I’ve been in a long time. Having a camera with a built-in light meter also helped a lot, as I was able to focus more on composition rather than using an external light meter to figure out exposure while also trying to compose well.

Max has been getting more into photography as well, so it was nice to be able to wander on hikes together slowly, without feeling like we were taking too long or holding each other back when we wanted to take some photos. He took some great shots too, here are some of me:

With our banana duck friends in Radium Hot Springs

After the food poisoning, we were pretty ready to be home, although I wasn’t quite prepared for being immediately thrown into the deep end for work. In retrospect, we probably should’ve stayed in a single place for longer rather than trying to see and do so much (as we always do). Even though we always have a fun time together, we could’ve leaned a little bit more into the relaxation aspect of a honeymoon.

Other things learned on the trip:

We love Seattle a lot (I guess we already knew this)
Moisture and trees and moss make us feel alive
24 hours is the maximum amount of time to spend on a train
Always weigh down your patio umbrellas
Stay at least 2 nights in each place

honeymoon adventures

2024 reflection

we’re back?