Jasper

We collected a car today and organised park permits etc. Quite rightly, a charge is made for accessing any of the National Parks in Canada. It helps maintain them and keep them in pristine condition.
Jasper is a small attractive tourist town in the Athabasca valley, surrounded by high mountain peaks wherever you look. People like us visit in the summer and skiers in the winter. I’m reminded of Flagstaff in Arizona, where goods trains are a huge part of life.
The station here has a dominant role to play too, not only with The Rocky Mountaineer.
Massive amounts of goods are moved by rail in Canada. We have seen half mile goods trains on several occasions and there are very few large juggernauts on the highways, in fact they are banned from some roads altogether. Interestingly, you are only allowed to live in Jasper if you work here. Second homes do not exist, as the authorities do not want to destroy the town with an influx of wealthy home owners who do nothing for the area. I can appreciate that, because that would surely happen as it has in the UK.
We have made several small trips today under our own steam.
Pyramid Lake is a short drive to the north of the town climbing steadily. The lake is a beautiful blue, as they all seem to be and we started off for a short walk, to a small island just off shore, joined by a bridge. We hadn’t taken too many steps when we espied two huge female elk browsing the undergrowth just off the path. We watched them for a while, as they eyed us, before deciding to take a photo from another viewpoint! They can be very dangerous just now, as it is calving season. I did take some photos though which I’ll post.
We decided to visit two spots at this end of The Icefields Parkway, which we will also hit tomorrow. We drove up a switchback road with incredible views to the base of Mt Edith Cavell. (named after the British nurse executed by the Germans during WW1, for helping allied soldiers to escape through the lines - she was born in Swardeston Norfolk, where her father was the Vicar) I had hoped to see the wildflower meadow, but hadn’t appreciated it was a two hour hike each way and time wasn’t on our side. There were however several beauties growing at the base and again the views were stupendous, so it was certainly not a wasted journey. We moved on to the Athabasca Falls, still using the beautiful back road that had been recommended to us. Here is the Athabasca River in full spate, over a spectacular falls. Again it is difficult to describe the power and beauty of the water, even in a very small version of Niagara. Of course the setting of background mountains adds to the drama. There was even a rainbow! You’ll see what I mean by the photos.
A change of scene tomorrow, so we’ll see what unfolds!Read more