0051 28th June - Jasper to Banff

Leisurely get up and breakfast, and then we headed into Jasper for a wander and bit of a shop for supplies. Jasper has such a nice “feel” to it, and we had a lovely wander round and shop – including a delicious ice cream from an ice cream shop also advertising Korean Kim Chi !!!  The guy was a hoot – He nearly managed to persuade us to stay in Jasper for a month !!

The road to Banff is such a great drive, and the first sight to see was the Athabasca Falls which I had found by accident last time, and wanted to show Janet as they are so spectacular.  We somehow missed the turning the first time, so had to turn around and come back – But it was worth it.  The river flows off the Athabasca Glacier in the Columbia Icefields, and is a very wide fast flowing river at this time of year – Maybe 50 metres across ?  And at the falls it all suddenly drops into a narrow canyon that is maybe 5 metres wide – Even less in places, as you can see from the photos.  The power of the water is just mesmerizing, and we spent an hour or so wandering round, admiring them.  From one of the information signs, we noticed that this river, that starts here in the Jasper NP, actually ends up flowing through the Great Slave Lake into the MacKenzie River up north, which eventually flows out into the Arctic Ocean at Inuvik, where we had been a couple of weeks ago !  So we have tracked the river from source to ocean !!

Then it was back on the road south again – I knew we would be stopping many more times yet to see things, and I didn’t want to leave our arrival at a camp site too late.  A wrap for lunch under the customary mountain back drop,   and then it was on past lakes, and mountains, and mountains and lakes.  It was a lovely day, with just a little cloud, but the tops of most of the mountains were clear – A perfect day for this scenic drive.  Most of the day we were driving at about 1500 metres, and the mountains around us were up to 3500 metres.  The Columbia Icefields centre was absolutely packed, with people setting out on tours to go and walk on a glacier.  Lovely day for it, but as we had already been on the Matanuska Glacier, we drove around for a while enjoying the scenery, and then head on down the road.

The Sunwapta Pass is just gorgeous, and we stopped to admire the view a number of times.  There is almost too much beauty in such a small area to be able to properly absorb it all – It just keeps coming !!  We had noticed on our map that there was a campsite just north of Lake Louise, at Mosquito Lake, and this was close enough to allow us to get to Calgary the next day, and we hoped that it would be far enough from Banff to not be booked out……….and it wasn’t !!  We found a spot RIGHT beside a busy babbling river – It was almost flowing through our tent !!  Just perfect.  After setting up camp, we went for a wander through the camp site – And found a(nother) dutch Troopie !!!   We had seen this one going the other way as we left Anchorage a few weeks ago, so it was good to catch up with them – Ad and Bernadette.  They have come north from S America, so over a beer beside the river we were able to get a few hints from them about places to go and things to see.  Wish we had met them earlier on our trip – Delightful couple. 

We had found some spare ribs when shopping in Jasper, so for our last night in the van before Janet left, we had spare ribs around a roaring camp fire, beside an ice blue river.  Just a perfect camping spot. 

 

Pics here :-  https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0051JasperToBanff?authkey=Gv1sRgCPqa9_jwtufCuQE#