Jasper National Park

We left Lake Louise under dreary skies and continued northwest on highway 93 towards Jasper. We soon entered the Icefields Parkway, touted as one of the most scenic drives in North America. I'll go with that. It traverses the spine of the Canadian Rockies and tops out at the Icefield Centre, which offers commanding views of the Colombia Icefield, and several large glaciers. From there one can take a snow coach out onto the surface of the glacier. We saw several black bears from the road. Black bear sightings along the road have become pretty common lately, so I won't bore you with a series of bear pictures .. well maybe a few. At a pull-off we met a couple traveling to Alaska from Greensboro. Small world. After the Icefield Centre the highway gradually descended and, after traveling about 145 miles, we arrived in Jasper AB. We set up camp in Whistlers Campground for two nights. Whistlers CG is HUGE, with 781 sites. However, once you are parked it doesn't seem so big. All the sites are wooded and spaced widely apart. The washroom in our loop was closed because the pipes were frozen. Dorcas went through the woods trying to find the one in the next loop and got lost. My navigator.


The sun came out and we explored the town of Jasper, which is very pretty. The Canadian Pacific Railway
has some major operations there, and while we were there the VIA Rail Canada train was in. It has observation cars with roof-top perches. That looks like a very interesting way to tour the country. We took some short hikes around Jasper and a road trip out to Maligne Lake. Along the way we saw big horn sheep and elk.
No shortage of wildlife in these parts.

In case you can't tell, this is a different bear than above! No more bear pics for a while.