Jasper, Alberta, CA

Today,5/21/14, we traveled north through Banff National Park into Jasper NP and stopped in Jasper. We headed out on Route 93 A which paralleled Rt 93 but was a rural county road with no traffic. It had easy accessibility to the tourist attractions and is the highlight of getting up here before the tourist season gets moving. Our first stop was Lake Louise. The lake was mostly iced over but the mountains and glacier feeding the lake were awesome. The site also had a large beautiful hotel. (Not in our budget). We continued north through a never ending string of snow covered peaks rising up on both sides of the road. We began to wonder how Alaska could be any more impressive!Then we came to the Columbia Ice field. What a spectacular site. There was glacial ice to be found in almost every mountain peak. The Columbia Glacier was still quite large and very impressive. (tours were mentioned in my last posting).

Columbia Icefields.

Please click on the photos to enlarge them for your viewing. (It has been difficult to load the medium sized ones.) We continued into Jasper and registered for our final two nights in the area at Whistler's Campground (NP). So far we traveled about 250 miles through the Canadian Rockies. We have never seen a more impressive string of continuous snow capped peaks in our lives. A most impressive place to visit! We are camping in Whistler's and on the slope-side just below the gondola. There are reports of a female grizzly with a new cub in the area and we are taking appropriate precautions. I did see some scat that may be bear. (but I'm no expert) There is lots of deer scat around and when I jogged over to the nearby washroom hut, clapping as I went, I did indeed startle a 4 point buck. The next day we just relaxed and got ready for our continued drive north west. We had done our chores in the camper and headed downtown to a basement coffee/baked goods bar that doubled as a laundry and public shower. Very nice! It also had wifi, $3/ hour and I was able to start my blog, but it took too long to download any pictures so some essential emails were sent and I am playing catch-up over the next 10 days when I finally have my own hotspot in range (.of a cell tower in Alaska). We stopped into our second pub in two days in Jasper this time at the Jasper Brewery Pub and had some fine samples to quench our thirsts! A good way to finish our last day in the Canadian NP system.