We wake up to the cold
morning, eat breakfast, and get back on the Icefield Parkway heading
towards the town of Jasper, AB. We stop at both Sunwapta Falls and
Athabasca Falls. Both falls are gorged with melted glacier water
that is compressed into a small passage creating pretty powerful
surges of water.
Then we try to get a campsite at the Whistler's
campground, but it's booked for the whole weekend. Fortunately we
can get an electric site in their overflow RV parking. It's not the
best, but it has a nice view and electricity. One little problem,
our electric cord is tangled and can't reach the site's plug-in. We
now become determined to solve this issue. Red gets some tools and
fixes it. The opening for the cord is a bit messed up, but at least
it's long enough now. It's another cloudy and chilly day, so we eat
lunch and do some trip planning. In the afternoon we get some
motivation and drive to Maligne Lake. The area is filled with bears,
moose, and caribou. We are especially eager to see a moose, as
neither of us has seen one. We drive pretty slowly but see no
wildlife. We arrive to the cute lake and hike the Mary Schaeffer
Loop, hiking along the lake shore before crossing into the forest and
hilly lands. The grounds is covered with mosses of different shapes
and colors and has variety of mushrooms too. At the end of the loop,
we head back to the parking. While approaching the parking lot, Red
notices something moving out of the corner of her eye, probably a
tourist. The next second we are face to face with a black bear. We
are startled. We turn around as quickly as possible and try to walk
rapidly in the other direction without running.
The bear
nonchalantly moves the other direction. We circle back around the
parking lot and keep a safe distance from him, but observe him eating
berries. We go to our RV and drive back to where we were and find
the bear still eating berries but now next to the road. He doesn't
even seem to notice the group of tourists snapping pictures of him
from the other side of the road. Whew, that was a close one.
We
drive slowly back to the town of Jasper looking for moose or caribou
and also being careful about our very low gas tank.
We treat ourselves to
dinner at Jasper Brewing Company. We order two bison burgers along
with some of their house beers. Later we learn that the brewery was
started by some local young people after winning the lottery. Great
thinking there.
The next day we spend some
time cooking clam chowder and making some sushi rolls for the next
days. The sun comes out in the afternoon, so we decide to go hiking.
Unfortunately the trail we had planned to explore around the
beautiful Mount Edith is closed due to a fallen glacier.
We decide
to continue on AB Highway 93A, a narrow and windy road, that is
surrounded by beautiful mountains and rivers. We chat with some
locals at Leech Lake who have lived in Jasper for the last 35 years.
The husband is a train engineer, which captivated Yellow's attention,
and the wife is a nurse at the local hospital. We stopped at
Horseshoe Lake and found that the trail the flooded, but knew there
must be another way because of all the cars in the parking lot. We
made our to the center of the horseshoe through unofficial trails and
found some brave (or crazy) people swimming and cliff jumping. The
lake's deep blue color matched its profound depth. Later we drove to
Pyramid Lake and Lake Patricia before heading back to camp.
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