|
The
skies cleared as we crossed the Continental divide and entered Alberta.
The BC Rockies were doing their job soaking up the water,
although it had chilled down quite a bit! Still, we were
pretty
excited to get to Jasper. Arriving in the early evening, we
stopped briefly in the town and picked up a few supplies, then headed
out to Wapiti campground, about 5 km south of town.
It
was a pretty chilly night, as were all all of our nights in
Jasper. I checked the weather log later and found that it was
dropping below freezing some nights! But the next morning the
sun
came out and warmed things up. Naturally, I took out our map
of
the park, scoped out the road which went up the largest mountain, and
headed up!
This road took me up towards Mt. Edith Cavell,
which was really spectacular:
Another
place where it is hard for a camera to do justice. Turning
180
degrees from the spot where I took the above photo gave a great view of
Lake Cavell, which was an astonishing blue-green colour:
The
road up kind of spooked me! It was very twisty and went
through
what looked like prime bear territory to me. I don't think
that
it helped that I looked at the 'bear sighting' memo that was posted at
the campground and saw how many bears had been recently spotted.
I tried to make lots of noise on my way up.
In
the end, I saw no bears, but there was a moose quite near the side of
the road. After cycling a safe distance past him, I got out
my
camera and rolled back down towards him. He was by then gone, but I did
manage to get this great photo of a Sasquatch disappearing right where
the moose had been:
Our
original plan in Jasper was to just stay 1 night in Wapiti campground,
but we liked the scenery so much we decided to stay for
several
more. It completely exceeded our expectations!
Every day
was full of spectacular scenery, and the weather was great.
This is a shot of Lake Beauvert, where the Fairmont lodge is located.
There are trails going right around it. We hiked
partially
and mountain-biked completely around.
It may be the most beautiful lake I've ever seen, although
I'm
not sure how you'd really judge something like that. It's
incredibly
clear and a really astounding shade of blue. The surrounding mountains
are the crowning jewel!
One day we rented mountain bikes and did a fair bit of riding.
The woman who worked in the bike shop recommended a couple of
trails we could explore. I suspect that what she was really
trying to do was to send us out into bear country never to return so
they could collect the insurance money on the bikes (it was getting
late in the season, after all). But, we survived all that,
and
spent a few hours riding around some more tame trails - like this one.
Once again, no bears, but we did meet this elk,
who followed us (I'm not going to say chased) for quite a ways!
The train station in Jasper was quite a bustling place!
Trains
headed to points east and west - you can catch a train to
Toronto
or Vancouver from here.
We
had to keep moving campsites because we were only renewing one or two
nights at a time. We thought we'd get our fill and want to move
on, but we kept finding more and more terrain to explore!
This
was probably the nicest of the spots we stayed in - it was huge,
private, near the washrooms, and backed onto the Athabasca river!
The
Athabasca river was also a spectacular highlight for us. We
hiked
the trail that runs along it nearly every night. The next few
photos were taken from that trail.
Another day, I
rode my bike part way along the Maligne Valley. It was
a very scenic ride! Medicine Lake, where this picture is taken, is a
mountain-lined lake part way
along the road. It was uphill the whole way there, and there
was a
company which would rent you a bike and drive you up there so you could
'coast' back to the town. I don't understand why you'd do
that and
miss all that great uphill.
Cheryl
and I came back to the same spot in the van and spent some more time
exploring little side trails and scenic pullouts the whole way up the
Maligne Valley to Maligne Lake.
This
was taken along the Maligne Valley - the sedmientary rock which forms
these mountains and helps give colour to the lakes and rivers was
clearly visible!
This was us up at Maligne lake.
We saw a lot of wildlife in the park - woodpeckers (above), elk
(below), moose, big horn sheep, squirrels and chipmunks, jackdaws, just
to name some. Cheryl even spotted a bear just before we
entered
the park boundary.
One
remarkable thing about Jasper is that the park is so huge that even
remarkably beautiful places do not get overrun with people.
This
was a little pullout along the road where we stopped for a little rest.
We found (and raided) raspberry bushes with plenty of
berries!
It was a really peaceful, scenic spot, right by the river.
This
was our last campsite at Wapiti before we finally decided to move on.
There was a Unimog camper beside us, but it left before I
could
get a photo of it. I kept getting the song "Unicow" stuck in
my
head.
Next
|
