August 20-27, National Parks in Alberta

Jasper

We headed back into the Rocky Mountains for a week in the national parks. We had a moment of panic when checking into the park. Our chosen campground was marked “full” at the park entrance. Dennis decided to check just in case there was a cancellation and it turned out they had many spaces left. We tucked into our lovely spot and headed north to explore. The sky was brilliant blue and set off the gray mountains perfectly. We went to Maligne Canyon, a 165 foot deep gorge. Six footbridges gave us a great view of the rushing water below us. Sometimes the canyon was so narrow and deep that we couldn’t see the water, but we could sure hear it and feel the cool air from it. We saw elk along the road into the Jasper Lodge and walked around the grounds and lobby. While we considered having a cocktail, the $12 price tag was a bit much. We had sunny skies again the next morning and headed south to see the remaining sights at this stop. The mountains were gorgeous. We arrived at Athabasca Falls and wondered what the big deal was since it just looked like rapids, but continued down the path and quickly figured it out. We started above the falls and worked our way down to the bottom of another steep and narrow gorge. As interesting as anything were the former paths of the falls. It was amazing that the river re-routed itself when it had such a clear cut channel. Our next hike up Mount Edith Cavell taught us the difference between a short trail and an easy trail. Oh well, the steep uphill climb was worth it once we saw the glacier and icebergs floating in a pond. We wandered past the downed warning sign and over to an ice cave. It was warm until we were in line with the mouth of the cave, and then a cold wind blasted us. A rock slide occurred nearby while we were walking out to the cave. This was a good thing, in that it gave us a little reminder to be sensible and kept us from wandering into the cave. We toured the rest of the campground on our way home and came across an elk and a WOLF!!! We have been looking for a wolf since Denali and had pretty much given up on seeing one. Sorry about the poor picture - the photographer was very excited and the wolf was not.

Lake Louise

It was overcast with a few sprinkles for our drive south on the Icefields Parkway. This is disappointing since it is ranked by some travel gurus as one of the top 10 scenic drives in the world. It was still plenty scenic (just not great for pictures) and we enjoyed all the glaciers, waterfalls and lakes. We added more new animal sightings today – mountain goats and bighorn sheep. We planned to stay near the Columbia Icefield but our trusty Trailer Life guide was wrong when it said we could fit, as the maximum length allowed was 25ft and Dennis couldn’t figure out how to fold the RV in half. There were a few more stops along the parkway before we arrived in Lake Louise. Funny thing about Lake Louise…we were here before on a motorcycle trip but forgot to look at the lake! We ran into a gift shop to get Mom a Lake “Louise” sweatshirt, hopped on the bike and left. We must have been 40 miles down the road before we realized our error. It was worth the wait. We wandered around the shore and through the hotel. Our sunny day gave way to rain the next morning. We were a little disappointed since we were going to backtrack 30 miles to see some sights Dennis missed while concentrating on his driving. It turned into a great thing once rainbows appeared everywhere. We almost ran up the hill to Peyto Lake (not quite realizing how long the trail was) in time to catch the rainbow over it. The lake itself was an unreal turquoise color. We took a side trip into Yoho National Park, back in British Columbia. We didn’t quite understand this sign about the switchbacks at first, but it dawned on Dennis shortly afterward. This person never did understand that he was supposed to be in reverse on the middle switchback. Although we saw RVs and tour buses on this road, we were glad to be in the Jeep. Takakkaw Falls are the second highest in Canada, at 1250 feet. We also stopped at this Natural Bridge, but it wasn’t anything like we were expecting after seeing those in AZ and Utah. Our final stop was Moraine Lake, above Lake Louise. Our campground in Lake Louise was really pretty, but VERY close to busy railroad tracks, so we moved on after two days.

Banff

Dennis geared up for the 40 mile drive down the Bow Valley Parkway to Banff. We worried the most about traveling without reservations at this stop, but all worked out and we pulled into a great spot with full hookups at the national park campground. We took the Jeep back up the parkway to see the sights, including Castle Mountain. Johnston Canyon was the highlight of the day. We walked through the canyon on a narrow trail and on catwalks, trying to imagine how the catwalks were ever installed. We also went back into British Columbia for the last time into Kootenay National Park. We’re using the heck out of our park pass! We hiked to Marble Canyon and the paint pots, which are cold pools of ochre. There was a family with two young boys there and the father was having all the fun scooping up the mud. We couldn’t help but feel sorry for the kids. Our final day in Banff was custom-tailored for Barb. We drove down to the town of Canmore to see the ammonite factory. Ammonite is a fossil found in just a few areas of the world, SE Alberta being one of them. We learned how they mine and process it into ammolite jewelry. Barb has drooled over this on almost every cruise and today was the day she finally got a ring. Happy girl! Side note about the drive home: We were surprised to see this pink SUV being driven by a burly guy – with a woman sitting next to him. Now, that’s a secure man! We stopped at Lake Minnewanka on the way home and were busy looking at the lake when a herd of bighorn sheep came running up the road. They posed so nicely for pictures that Dennis said he expected them to pass the tip jar at any moment. People drove into the pullout at all angles and jumped out with their cameras. It was great entertainment! We capped off this lovely day with happy hour and sliders on the Rundle Lounge patio at the Banff Springs hotel.

August 16-20, Fort Nelson & Fort St John BC, Grande Prairie & Grande Cache AB

Boy, do we have some catching up to do! We've been basically without internet for the past two weeks. We continued through the mountains of northern British Columbia, which gave way to farmland in Alberta. The clouds ahead were strange looking and Barb commented that it looked like it could hail. Fortunately it didn’t, but we did get slush, which did an excellent job of cleaning off our windshield. There were a lot of natural gas well heads in the mountains and some continuing into the plains. The towns were all booming and “now hiring” signs were everywhere. (We later found this was true throughout Alberta) We stayed at a nice park run by the Rotary in Fort St John, where we enjoyed this sunset. We saw the woman who had checked us in with several of our neighbors’ rigs in the background on the news that night. It was a good story about this summer’s tourist crowds. You probably didn’t think a trailer park making the news would be GOOD news, did you?? We finally made it to the beginning of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek. Sure wish we could alter our photo so that it says we were exiting rather than entering the highway. Oh well, we are glad that we ran the highway “backward”. We watched a really interesting movie about the building of the highway that went into more history and current information than anything else we’ve seen. Fresh BC cherries were for sale just outside the visitor center. They were a bit pricey, but are nearly as big as plums and delicious. We had another Rotary experience in Grande Prairie when we took a bus tour of the area. Our guide was a last minute fill-in and it wasn’t the best tour, but we could see where it could be really interesting. Grande Prairie is a rapidly growing and prosperous town. Their top industries are agriculture, forestry, oil/gas and tourism. The smell of fresh cut wood was everywhere in town. We went by this community college building and were able to see the detail of how they laid the bricks to get the smooth curves. They are off-kilter and some stick out more than others but it leads to the smooth look. Our guide said they had to keep doing sections over again since it went against everything the bricklayers had ever been taught. Grande Cache was a larger town than we expected. The main industry seems to be a coal plant just outside town. It is mostly surface mining, although some has been underground. We could see the coal seams running through several of the mountains. The local power plant is at the mine and most of the rest of the coal is shipped to China. We wandered onto the mine property until we came to the security hut. We stayed in a beautiful municipal campground and had a great campfire since we figured we couldn’t really hurt the air quality near a coal mine! Firewood was free but Dennis had to (aka got to) play lumberjack to get the pieces down to a manageable size.