Aug 2007

It poured over night, but the rain has stopped this morning. We wake up early to get an early start to Lake Louise. Good plan, but we cannot get the trailer hitched when it’s time to leave. After about 20 minutes, we finally manage to get the hitch to close properly. We’re wondering if we bent it when we were trying to get it unhitched a few days ago. Anyway, we’re finally on our way.

It’s definitely colder today and apparently the rain last night was snow at higher elevations. The mountain tops have a thin layer of snow—very pretty.

We are traveling the Icefields Parkway today. A very scenic drive between Jasper and Banff, with lots and lots of glaciers that can be seen from the road.

We stop at the Columbia Icefields Center and decide to have a snack in the lodge before taking the bus to the glacier. Great view of the glacier from the window seat.

After our snack we get on the bus that will take us up to the Athabasca Glacier. The total tour takes about 90 minutes, with an 8 minute busride to get to the snow shuttles to ride on the glacier. The clouds have lifted and we get blue skies! Great views!

The bus ride to the glacier is fine, but the snow shuttle starts with an incredible steep drop down a hill. Several of us can’t believe that we’re actually going down this hill. Here is a picture that Joe took of a shuttle traveling down the incredibly steep hill. It’s blurry because of the very bumpy snow shuttle ride:

The tour guide tells us that it was 25 deg F last night and they had snow so the glacier is all white instead of blue at some parts.

We walk around the glacier and take lots of pictures.

We return on the bus to the lodge and take one last picture of the glacier:

And a picture of the lodge located across the street from the glacier, where we started our bus tour of the glacier:

The scenery after we leave the Athabasca Glacier area is also spectacular.

Unfortunately the clouds and rain settle in before we get to Lake Louise, so no more pretty pictures :-( Then when we arrive at the Lake Louise Campground around 3pm, they’re full. The good news is that they have an overflow area, so we drive there and drop off the trailer. Then we drive to the Lake Louise-Banff National Park Visitor Center and onto Chateau Lake Louise. It’s pouring rain by this time, so we spend close to an hour roaming around the Chateau, looking at the art and architecture.

The evening is spent watching TV in the parking lot overflow area and listening to the pouring rain.

A very rainy day today, but we decide to drive out to Miette Hot Springs anyway.

It turns out to be a good decision. The rain stops for most of the time we’re in the pool and the hot water feels good.

Today is not only rainy but it’s also cold, with a high around 50 degrees. So the lifeguards have winter coats on and the one is drinking coffee and the other has a winter ski cap on. That’s something you don’t see every day :-)

We stay at the hot springs for close to two hours. What else are we going to do in the rain?

On the way back to Jasper we pass more big horn sheep and an elk with a very large rack.

We do some window shopping at the Jasper gift shops, have dinner at A&W (again), and return to the trailer for the evening. It continues to rain steady. Despite the rain it looks like the campground is going to be full again tonight.

It’s a cloudy morning for our drive to Maligne Lake. The drive is okay, but would probably be a lot prettier on a sunny day. Anyhow.... the highlight is the big horn sheep that are walking beside (and on) the road. They are very tame. I'm guessing some tourists must feed them, but no one feeds them today.

As we pull into the parking lot at Maligne Lake we spot a deer. I think it's a mule deer because of it's really long ears, but Jere says it's a white tail. Maybe it's a hybrid :-)

We want to canoe or kayak on the lake, so we stop in at the historic Maligne Lake boat house.

They do not have any single kayaks left, so after looking at the waves on the lake, we decide that I should stay on the stationery land while Jere and Joe kayak in a 2-man kayak. They kayak for almost two hours – it starts to rain so they decide to keep it short. I stroll around the lake and do some bird watching while they kayak.

We see more big horn sheep on the drive back.

It rains off and on for the drive, but fortunately the rain stops when we stop to take our hike down the Maligne Canyon. The canyon is very pretty, but hard to take photographs since it is very narrow and very deep, with a roaring creek at the bottom. The walk takes about two hours and gives us a workout when we return to the top of the canyon.

We return to the campground for dinner and then walk around the very large campground after dinner.

Beautiful morning so I walk over to the Mt Robson café for some cinnamon buns and to get some pictures of Mt Robson with blue skies and very few clouds. A gorgeous mountain and the tallest one in the Canadian Rockies.

After breakfast we pack up and head to Jasper National Park. Our first stop is about a mile down the road at the Overlander Waterfalls. It’s a short ½ mile walk to the falls—beautiful morning for a walk.

One other stop along the way:

Then we’re back on the road for the Whistler Campground in Jasper National Park. We wait in line for our campsite. We think it’s a long wait, but later in the day we will see that this is a short wait (around 3pm, the line consists of 50+ campers waiting to get a campsite). There are around 700 campsites here.

It takes us an hour to unhitch our 5th wheel! We had this problem the other day also, where we couldn’t get the hitch to open. Today we realize that the one leg of the 5th wheel is not working correctly, which is causing the 5th wheel to be slanted and then the hitch gets bound up. So we figure out how to fix the 5th wheel leg and then the hitch easily disconnects. We’re just really glad that we could fix the 5th wheel leg with the tools we have on hand.

After having a quick lunch we head out to see the area. Our first stop is at the Jasper National Park visitor center in the town of Jasper. As we pull into town we spot a herd of elk in the park beside the road. So we pull into the parking lot to take pictures and the herd decides to move down the street—right down the center of the main street! What a sight.

After a quick stop at the visitor center to get a map and list of trails

we head back to the campground to grab a snack before our hike back to Angel Glacier. When we get to the road that leads to the campground, we cannot get through. Both lanes of the road into the campground are packed solid with campers to the intersection. There must be about 50 campers waiting to get in. We end up driving up the road and park at the edge of the campground so Joe & I can walk back to the trailer to grab some food for our picnic.

We drive the old Jasper highway towards Angel Glacier.

Our major stop this afternoon is at the Angel Glacier. We have a picnic dinner and then do the 2-mile loop to see the three glaciers in the area. The biggest glacier is the Angel Glacier, but there is also a glacier at the base of the mountain that calves icebergs into the lake. Very nice hike. Great scenery.

We pass a beautiful blue glacial lake on the road to/from Angel Glacier, but there aren't any pulloffs to get a good pic, but here is a partial view of the lake:

Our other major stop is at the Athabasca Waterfalls. We take the walk around the waterfall area. The area is pretty much empty since it's getting late. No tourist buses or crowds in the evening.

We drive back to the campsite and relax for the remainder of the evening. The campsite is really nice—large with lots of trees and very private.

We spend most of the day in the car driving to Mt Robson Provincial Park, which is about an hour west of Jasper National Park. The campgrounds in Jasper fill up early in the day, so we decide to stop at Mt Robson for the night. This campground is huge, but has also been filling up the last few nights. Apparently the first weekend in August is the most popular weekend of the summer for camping in Canada since it's the last 3-day weekend before school starts.

The scenery is okay but nothing special today,

until we get close to Mt Robson, the tallest peak in the Canadian Rockies.

We’re at Mt Robson Meadows Campground, a very nice provincial park. The campsites are large and lots of trees between campsites. Quite different from many of the parking lot RV parks that we’ve been staying at recently.

We set up camp and walk over to the visitor center. Mt Robson’s top is covered with clouds, but it is still picturesque.

Then we have dinner and spend the rest of the evening relaxing around the campfire. Of course if there’s a campfire at the Engelman campsite, there are always s’mores :-)