Day 11 - From Banff to Jasper, Alberta (Canada)

Travel   From: Banff NP, AB   To: Jasper NP, AB   Distance: 212 mi (341 km)   Travel time w/brks: 11 hr 32   Distance since start: 3,516 mi (5,654 km)

Saturday 7/1/2006 (Canada Day)

Today is Canada day, our neighbor's equivalent to 4th of July. This year it fell on a Saturday. We're expecting quite a bit of traffic this weekend so we decided to get going early on in the morning. We gave ourselves one extra hour of sleep and got up at 4am. Last night Isabella insisted we do not fire up the catalytic heater because it was "too warm". When we got up, it was 50F outside (10C) and 58F inside. I had to fire up the catalytic heater in the morning to warm us up a bit. Karl was unsusally drowsy. Our guess is that this was due to the Benadril medication he took last night to help supress his rash. By 5am we rolled out of Banff's Tunnel Mountain campground. As we left the campground, two elk females got up with their calves, just beside the road. Both females wore tracking devices around their necks. They looked like wide belts a guy would wear.

Our first stop this morning was Lake Louise. We wanted to get there early to ensure we got good parking. Lake Louise lies along the road towards Jasper, so it was not out of our way. We arrived there just after 6am. It was cold outside. I fired up the heater in the trailer and everyone moved into it to have breakfast. We ate cereal. When we were done, we walked out the short trail to the edge of the lake. It was quite spectacular. The water was some sort of turqoise blue. On one side of the lake is a hotel.

Lake Louise in Banff NP, Alberta

No sooner had we shown up at the edge of the water until two busloads of asians rolled in with their cameras and wanted to crowd us out. And, worse, darker rain clouds started to come in over the glacier. In a matter of minutes, the glacier was all dark. We walked for a few minutes along the shore, but we could feel a few drops of rain and decided to walk back to the truck/trailer. We huddled for a little while and then decided we should move on instead. It was now 8am and we had already covered some essentials. There was really no point in trying to explore this lake in the rain.

As we pulled out on the access road Isabella suggested we should drive up to Moraine Lake. She had seen pictures of that lake in a deck of postcards and it looked very pretty. The road up to Lake Moraine was much longer than the one to Lake Louise. But is was definitely worth the journey. Lake Moraine has nothing more than a small lodge at its base. And better still, the sun came out as well. This lake looks even better than Lake Louise, actually. We walked up along a trail to a good vantage point. It also helped to reduce some of the glare from the lake itself, bringing out more pronounced colors. We then took a nice walk along a trail on the right side of the lake until we reached a river. The weather cooperated and it looked magnificent.We headed back to the trailer and had an early lunch. We decided to continue towards Jasper.

Look, this is where Gatorade comes from claims Isabella!

A more complete view of Moraine Lake, Banff NP, AB

Posing in front of Moraine Lake

Along the way we stopped at Pyeto Lake. The boys stayed back in the truck, while me and Isabella took the hike up to a view point. On the left side you could see a big glacier melting with the runoff going into a big lake. The color can best be described a mint syrup with milk. We must have been standing 1,000ft about the surface of the water. We decided to skip the hike up to Bow Summit.

Pyeto Lake in Banff NP, AB

We continued towards the town of Jasper. After a while we stopped at the Columbia Icefield, just after we had crossed over into Jasper National Park. This is a place we want to visit tomorrow. The thought was that it would be very busy tomorrow, in terms of tourists, so we might as well inquire or even buy tickets now. As it turns out, you can only hike to the edge of the glacier unless you can show you have special equipment. You are not allowed to drive up with your own truck either. To get up on it you must take one of their big buses. They would not sell us tickets one day ahead; we had to come back tomorrow and buy them then. But we did learn that things turned into a bit of a lull around 4pm. The Icefield huge and you lose some perspective from the parking lot. But if you gaze up towards the Icefield and the large tour buses running on it you realize that it is very big.

Columbia Icefield, Jasper NP, AB (ice bus marked with red circle above)

We continued on towards the campground in Jasper. When we got there, the signs indicated that everything was full. Nevertheless, I had to ask if my request to upgrade to a full service site had been honored. The answer was not, so we'd have to make do with boon docking (no hookups). The campsites were nestled into a forrest of mainly leaf trees. There was plenty of space between the sites. Under the trees there was tall grass. We could see at least one Elk female wandering around. At first Isabella thought it was disoriented. But we soon learned that there was a whole herd of them walking in between the trailers, grazing on the nice grass.

Elk female grazing between the camping trailers. Red tracking collar looks like Santa put it on.

When we had gotten setup, I decided to give Rich Kushman a call. He is presently running a WBCCI-alternative caravan to Alaska. Rich responded and indicated that they were now in Liard Springs. They talked for a while to exhange information about each other's respective dates at various places. We concluded that we'd meet in Dawson City in a little over one week. I collected information about the campground they'd be staying at and we decided to meet up when we got up there. For dinner Erik prepared Spaghetti Carbonara. It tasted great. We looked a bit at the city's program for Canada Day and decided we wanted to head into the city to about 8:30pm. The weather continued to cooperate. As we parked the truck we could see that this is an important through route for the railroad here in Canada as there were several diesel locomotives pushing train cars around. It was about 75F outside and quite a bit of people walking on the streets. We got to the park that the program talked about but none of the activities were taking place. We rested on the grass for a while and just oberved people.

Isabella and Erik on the grass of Jasper's Centenial Park

We sat for a while but decided we did not have enough energy to wait for the 11:30pm fireworks so we headed back home to the campground. It was not too noisy there. Perhaps we were expecting more for Canada Day in terms of buzz.

Campground   Name: Whistler's, Jasper   Our hookups: None   WiFi: No   GSM service: Yes, three bars   TV Channels: Air but did not use   Cost: $29.50 CDN/night including $11 reservation fee   Reservation mode: Canada's national parks web site

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