Breakfast in our motel ain’t much – cereal and toast. So we went for a café hunt, and gas. At an intersection I asked a pedestrian if there were any good breakfast places in town. She said to try the deli, and gave us directions. What a score! The deli is great, it’s a locals hangout, and I’m sure we’ll be back there a few times.
The plan for today is to explore Jasper National Park. If you were to consult a map, here is what you would see. Jasper NP and Banff NP next to each other with a single road going north-south through them. Highway 1, the Trans Canada Highway, intersects this road between Jasper NP and Banff NP, and goes to Calgary (east) and Golden (west). Both parks are a couple hundred kilometers long. Getting the picture? By staying in either Golden or Calgary, the way you explore either NP is to drive to the middle and then drive north or south as you wish, and when you’ve gone as far as you feel like going, you turn around and drive back. Of course, you can explore many things along the way. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to be back in Golden (or Calgary). It’s not a good way to do it. But it is the way we will do it on this trip.
This day we hope to get all the way north in Jasper NP to Jasper (the town). We don’t plan to do much exploring or hiking, just driving. Turns out, though, that we got a bit of a late start (after 10am), and don’t enter the park until 11:11. It turns out that this will limit us to going about half way, to Icefields, and that’s it. So that’s what we did, making a few stops for gawking and shooting along the way.
Early the sky was mostly clear, and the views were majestic. Picture this: two parallel mountain ranges, both huge – you’re on a road that is built into the side of one of the ranges. Your view of the other range is unobstructed, and it is just incredible to behold – especially the snow and glaciers! Your view of the range you are on is sometimes obstructed by beautiful trees, but most of the time it is right there too. I guarantee your neck will be sore/stiff after this drive. The Wow Factor is off the scale, and it is all around you all the time.
Then there were the animal delays, and the road work delays, and of course the tourist delays. It wasn’t crowded, and actually the traffic moved along pretty well, with open road quite often. Still, I’d guess we averaged about 55kph (33mph). It’s not a fast drive, although at times you can move out pretty well. We got another bear shot, but it’s not a good picture. He was playing on the side of the road and had attracted quite a crowd when we got there. And we got a herd of big horn sheep (ewe and kids) crossing the road.
There is an extensive set of campgrounds here. We drove through several of them – they were all very similar, nice and well maintained. For future reference, if we ever decide to come back and really explore – hike, get involved, etc. – we will have to use the campgrounds. This leads to (gasp!) renting an rv to live in – something big enough for us and the boys and 30 days supplies. Tenting is out of the question for several reasons - #1, Bears; #2 – rain/snow; and #3 – room and comfort. Even Sally-Heath, who hates RV’s even more than I do, agrees that this would be the right way to do these parks. (S-H: I really really hate the idea of RV’s but the bears in there abundance here, would have me staying in one just to be safe and to be camping. The other thing about today was it rained. It started out as partly cloudy and built up and up until at the Icefields it started to rain, a little hail, too. On our way back to Golden we went through a few showers and later on in Golden a substantial rain storm blew through.)
We drove back to town, tired and happy and overwhelmed with the incredible beauty of all the mountains. After a quick clean up and change of clothes we headed out to find dinner. Just on a lark, we decided to check in the same area of town as the deli, and wouldn’t you know, there is the Whitetooth Bistro! The menu looks good, but from the outside we couldn’t tell if the place was open, much less occupied. But when we went in we found an almost full restaurant and a very pleasant atmosphere.
Their special was Bison steak, and we both had it. Very very good – nicely cooked and perfectly seasoned. I had to try their chocolate Bread Pudding, and it was great! Sally-Heath liked it too. The meal was very nice overall, and we had a great time.
It’s been a really good day. Now it’s bedtime once again. Goodnight.
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