Icefields Parkway North

We then hit the Columbia Icefields Discovery Centre - the centre point of the parkway. The Icefield is like a big frozen lake with frozen rivers (glaciers) coming off it - the Athabaskan glacier is the one you can see from the centre. The Sunwapta glacier feeds the river that runs alongside the road for much of the rest of the trip.We went into he centre and bought a few things - Ed loved a moose pillow! I enquired about timings for the Skywalk and the drive onto the glacier. We could have done both but wouldn't have finished until after 5pm, so as we are doing the glacier walk on Friday just booked for the Skywalk now. Had to wait about 10 minutes then we queued to join the bus (I dropped the moose back in the car - worried as usual about how we will fit everything in by the end of the holiday, may need a roof box). The bus took us about 10 minutes down the road to the Skywalk, with an entertaining commentary on the way. Apparently water from here flows into three separate oceans depending on which side of the mountain it runs down. Slightly scarily the big rocks either side of the road tumble down from high above and sometimes the road needs to be cleared of them in the mornings.

At the Skywalk we got handsets to give us a guided tour then followed the path along the side of the valley, looking at descriptions of how the valley formed and the animals and plants that lived there. We got to the showpiece, a glass floored horseshoe shape sticking 30m out over the canyon. Sam just stepped on then quickly off she then confined herself to what they called the chicken walk, the concrete rather than glass path. I found it slightly unnerving to be on such a big glass structure, kids were fine with it. Funny how the brain reacts to things like that. We made it off safely and continued the tour back to the bus and the centre. It was an interesting experience and broke up the journey nicely. Back at the centre we got drinks then headed off.

Not too far down the road we pulled over at a nice waterfall that had the bonus of being on various levels that you could scramble up to fairly easily. Ed and I got all the way to the bottom of the top part, where the water was falling the furthest and stood in the spray of the waterfall. Think he enjoyed this the most out of the whole day, was good fun.

Next stop was Sunwapta Falls, only a couple o minutes walk from the car park and where a lake emptied out into a canyon with great force. A bridge across the falls made viewing easy and the power of the water was clear.

After this we had our first encounter with nature, spotting cars pulled over and duly joined them to see a female elk (we found this out later when the commentary told us they had paler coloured bottoms) which was licking the rocks by the side of the road (they do this to get minerals that they don't get from their plant diet). Took some photos and got very close (from safety of car of course).

Our last pull off was Athabasca Falls, quite close to Jasper. Close to car park and as spectacular as the Sunwapta - a bit bigger if anything. From here we headed to Jasper and Mount Robson Inn. The sat nav got very confused, essentially because it didn't realise you could access the car pal from the side so took us straight past and round the houses to get to the front entrance (it continued with this every time but we are wiser now!). We checked in, nice room with bunk beds and super king size for us. Got some recommendations for dinner from reception and walked the 10 minutes or so into town. Was very busy (as it is very small downtown area) and we couldn't get in anywhere to eat so went to Subway in the end, then back to hotel quite exhausted by the driving.Read more