Joani & David's Travels

Joining the Lake Louise area with Jasper was the Icefields Parkway. It was billed as "The Most Beautiful Highway in the World". I don't have any reason to doubt their claim. We passed some glass smooth lakes reflecting trees and mountains beyond. I should have stopped, but I was determined to see the glaciers and I thought we could always see the same thing on another morning (turned out I was wrong).

We saw another black bear bounding down the center of the road. The car in front of us got a little too close and he headed into the woods, but not before Joani captured him in a few shots.

The Icefields Center was the central point for almost any of the tours, so it was very busy.

Taken from the balcony of the Icefields Center. You can see the glacier beyond the highway.

The people walking on the glacier are but tiny dots.

Zoomed in on the glacier, the ancient snow looks rather nasty.

I wanted to visit the Glacier Skywalk. It had a glass floor and glass rails cantilevered nearly a thousand feet over a canyon.

Below was a fast moving river turned gray with glacial flour. Across the canyon were impressive peaks covered with snow pack more than 300 feet thick. We found out the skywalk had just opened this spring so that was a bit of good timing.

I was a little apprehensive at first stepping onto the glass and looking down, but after a few minutes it was no problem. I still could have done without the goof balls who would jump on the glass to feel the whole thing shake!

I learned the names of some of the more prominent glaciers. In the picture below (from left to right) are the Sunwapta Glacier, Athabasca Peak, AA Glacier, Andromeda Peak, and Andromeda Glacier. All of this overlooked the Athabasca Glacier that was best viewed from the Icefields Center.

We were treated to a sundog over the Skywalk.

They described the layer of snow at the top as icing on a cake. It's hard to believe it is 300 feet thick at the edge.

On the way home we stopped at the Parker Ridge trail. Just a quick jaunt up the trail (2.5 km with a 275 meter elevation gain) and we had a view of the Saskatchewan Glacier. It was a lot of effort compounded by poor trail conditions (muddy in places), but the view was fantastic!

This little Pika (6" long) is a member of the bunny family.

As a bonus, we got to see a young Big Horn Sheep. He was quite far away so he is a bit blurry, but some wildlife along the trail is always a welcome addition.

Finally, we made it to the ridge and were rewarded with breathtaking views of the Saskatchewan glacier.

We could see evidence of an avalanche using my camera's 30X zoom.

I wondered if we were far enough north to see the Aurora Borealis. I tried to wait for nightfall - you know I'm usually asleep by 9:30 or 10:00. At 11:18, I finally stepped outside. I could only make out four points of light. I'm pretty sure two of them were planets (Saturn and Mars). It was still too light to make out any constellations, let alone see an aurora! It has to be disappointing to be a Canadian astronomer in the summer. I gave up and went to bed.

Another moving day. This one from Cranbrook, British Columbia to Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. It was 169.8 miles (68,705.6 total) of delightful driving. The roads were nice with only a few hills and they had passing lanes, so everyone was happy. The Canadian Rockies have some of the most amazing scenery we have seen driving.

As we passed through the small town of Radium Hot Springs, there was a sign indicating Big Horn Sheep crossing. I thought "sure, let me slow down because that'll happen". You guessed it - right down the center of the road in the middle of town!

Radium Springs looked very interesting. Next time we will plan a stop.

Our plan was to spend 11 days (possibly more?) in the Canadian National Parks, so an annual pass was in order. At $136.80 it seemed a little steep to me, but I only had to think about it once instead of each day. A lot of this area, in Alberta, is in the National Park System requiring the pass, so it was a must. We were staying in Banff, but adjoining it was; Jasper (north), Yoho (west), Glacier (different from Glacier in the US) and Mount Revelstoke (west of Yoho) and Kootenay (south). From the park gate we could see the road passed through a narrow slot in the rock - I don't think they will widen this road anytime soon!

We saw another sign that said no stopping on the road for bear watching. This time we were fully expecting to see bears. Without stopping it was difficult to get a good picture, but you can see it - a pretty sizable black bear right along the roadside.

Everywhere we looked there was amazing scenery! Snow capped mountains, steep valleys, rushing water, water falls and glaciers kept begging for me to pull the coach over for some better picture taking, but we kept on.

Highway 93 joined the Trans-Canada Highway for the last 20 miles into Lake Louise and we saw the strangest looking bridges. They were covered with soil and foliage. Joani speculated they must allow animals to safely get from one side of the highway to the other. Later in the information center we found she was exactly right!

The Village of Lake Louise specifically catered to tourism, so there were a lot of restaurants and shops and a nice Visitor's Center and not a lot of anything else except for, of course, our campground. The campground was divided into two sections hard sided and soft sided. The soft sided section was enclosed with electric fencing to keep bears out. In the hard sided section you were expected to keep a watch for bears and not antagonize them.

We hit the road as soon as we were set up. We wanted to get familiar with the area as quickly as possible. Lake Louise was only a few miles away.

The Bow River ran right by the campground.

The color of the water varied drastically depending on the direction and intensity of the sun.

The color came alive if the water was between your eye and the sun.

Late afternoon happened to be their busiest time of day, so we just took a quick look and moved on to Lake Moraine. Both lakes were absolutely beautiful. The color was a shocking shade of blue created by the glacial flour in the water and the reflection of the high altitude blue sky. There will be a lot to explore, but already we can see we made the right choice in visiting the Canadian Rockies!