DAY 13 – 21 ~ ALBERTA

The “Wild Rose Country”. We will be spending 8 days with three stops in Alberta; Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies and Grande Prairie (where there is a Costco).

 DAY 13 – 16 ~ BANFF NP

It was another long drive to the Canadian Rockies.  We drove through farm land and small towns until we started climbing into the Rockies.  Then the scenery was snowcapped mountains and lots of trees.  After 347 miles and 7 hours we reached Tunnel Mountain Trailer Court Campground in Banff National Park.

 This campground is under the trees with nice campsites.  The sites are U-shape, dirt and gravel pads right off of the road.  Not too private, but spacious.  There is a picnic table but no fire rings.  No campfires are allowed in any of the NP’s campgrounds right now.  There are bears in the area so no traces of food can be left out and no tents.

 After we set up we drove into town to get a late lunch.  Today it was a beautiful warm day.  The streets were crowded with lots of tourists.  I remember the very first time we visited Banff on our honeymoon 38 years ago. This place was a quaint village with unique shops of Canadian crafts and great restaurants.  Today it is a tourist trap.  All the shops have the same items, Canadian crap made in China and Japan.  There is still a Hudson’s Bay Co. (a British trading business started in 1609) but it is greatly reduced, with one small area of those beautiful woolen blankets and other wool items (but saw no coats or jackets).  The rest of the items you will see in many stores.

 But the views of gigantic snowcapped mountains are still there.  When you go into town, just look up.

 We came across this restaurant called Grizzly House.  A steak and fondue place.  We did not eat there, but take a look at their menu.  I think I would like the Exotic Fondue dinner.  How about you...yeah...I wouldn't either.

We are spending four days in the Banff area. The first day was warm and beautiful.  That night it rained and it didn’t stop for 3 days.  It rained, then there was hail followed by thunder and lightning, then it rained again.  And it was cold and you never saw the sun.
  

But that didn’t stop us from exploring the area.  We visited Lake Louise and had lunch in the Chateau Lake Louise.  We sat by the window and had great views of the lake.

 As we headed to view the lake, it rained hard with hail.

Banff and Jasper NP borders British Columbia, so we traveled into BC to visit Kootenay National Park and got our second wildlife sighting.  A lone Moose, eating on the side of the road.  A short distance away we came upon a lone Grizzly Bear eating the flowers on the side of the road.  I hope this is just the beginning of much more wildlife sightings.

 Numa Creek

 Kootenay NP scenery

 Moose forging for food in pools of water

 Grizzly bear eating flowers

  

We visited Radium Hot Springs where there are public pools with water from the natural hot springs in the area.  We had lunch at FireD UP BBP, a hamburger place.  We had a view of a very weird house that says it was featured on TV’s Weird House show.  Never heard of it, don’t know if it is a US or Canadian show.

 We drove through Yoho National Park on the way back to Banff.

 

 This is where we had a mishap with the car.  It was raining hard and the driver side windshield wiper flew off.  We turned around and found it in the middle of the highway, in several pieces.  So, we switched the passenger side wiper to the driver side and drove on to find a gas station.  So, I had no view of the scenery for a bit.  We stopped at the first gas station and bought another wiper, attached it and all is well.  Now we have had our trailer tripping mishap, let’s hope this will be it for the rest of the trip.

Tomorrow we head north into Jasper National Park.

DAY 17 – 19 ~ JASPER NP         

  
The drive to Jasper was beautiful.  We are still in the Canadian Rockies and the ride was full of beautiful scenery.  We had two wildlife sightings; elk and black bear.  

There is always a "wildlife jam" with traffic whenever there is wildlife along the road.  This poor bear was on the right side of the road and was trying to cross over to the other side.  He kept walking along the side of the road trying to find a clear area to cross, but cars kept pulling over and then slowly moving forward following the bear.  He was getting real agitated and scared.  Finely he was able to cross over.   

            

We made a stop at Bow lake to take in the beautiful view.

Also made a stop at the Columbia Icefield Centre to view the receding Athabasca Glacier.  We first visited this Glacier 37 years ago on our honeymoon.  What a difference in appearance from then to now.

It was a long day with all the stops.  After 185 miles and about 7 hours we arrived at Whistler Campground.  This is a very large, nice and comfortable campground with several loops and about 10 pull through campsites around each loop.  The sites are spacious with a lot of space between neighbors.  No WiFi or TV though.  We have to go into town to find a hotspot.

On our last night we had a visitor.  I was watching TV, and looked out the window and saw this elk resting in the grass next to our trailer.

 My taking pictures disturbed it, so it got up and had a snack.

We spent three nights in this area and visited several sights within the park.  The day we arrived we spent some time in downtown Jasper.  We found a nice place to eat dinner, the Raven Bistro where we had a delicious meal.  It’s an expensive restaurant, but it was full of locals.  It must be a local hangout as everyone who entered seemed to know each other.  We picked the right place to eat.  The shops in town are very much like Banff; all the gift shops carried the same stuff, all tourist crap.  So, we only looked, and did not enter any shops.
  

The next two days we drove around the National Park viewing the beautiful sights.  We stopped at Medicine Lake where a Ranger had a strong monocular trained at a tree top where there was a bald eagle with two chicks.  That was so fascinating. 

We drove to another spot a bit closer and I tried to take a photo with my phone camera view lens up against one eyepiece of our binoculars.  The pic was very fuzzy, but you can see the Eagle, but not the chicks.

Another beautiful view was Maligne Canyon and Lake.  On the way to Jasper Lodge to have lunch we saw big horn sheep (2 parents and 3 babies) along the road.

The highlight of our visit was visiting two powerful and fantastic water falls.  Athabasca Falls and Sunwapta Falls.

Athabasca Falls and River is one of three rivers that starts out at the top of the mountain where Athabasca Glacier is.  It runs through Jasper Park and into the Arctic Ocean. The falls are a category 5 waterfall that carved out a canyon on its way to the Arctic Ocean.  The power of this fall carved out caves and pot holes in the cliffs that it flows over.  There is a walkway on both sides of the cliff with a bridge over the river to connect to the other side.  That way you can view the falls and canyon from several angles.  A truly beautiful and powerful waterfall.

 
 

 Sunwapta Falls was caused by the abrupt change of course by the Sunwapta River.  The falls carved a gorge in the limestone rocks and now the falls have a height of 75 feet.  After the first falls or upper falls, the river flowed through the narrow canyon to form 3 more waterfalls.  Sunwapta means “turbulent river” in Stoney Indian language.  After viewing the upper falls we walked 1 mile downhill to view the lower falls.

 There have been many deaths at both these falls.  There are barriers all around the viewing points but some daring person always climbs over it to get better views.  There is no surviving any fall into the canyon.  The water is glacial-cold, swift and deep.  If you survive the fall, within minutes of hitting the water, hypothermia takes over and you cannot pull yourself out of the river.  Once over the falls, death is swift.

Tomorrow we drive to Grande Prairie, our last stop in Alberta.

DAY 20 – 21 ~ GRANDE PRAIRIE

The drive from Jasper to Grande Prairie was horrible.  We started out going north on highway 93 on a two lane, two-way road with a backup as the lead car was following a truck painting a striped line, then a double line on the road.  That lasted an hour and this was only the beginning. 

  

We then continued north on highway 40.  40 is also a two lane, two-way highway and this highway was being widened so both sides of the road were dug up and were scattered with construction equipment.  But the road itself was in horrible condition with waves and dips and pot holes and some parts of it gravel.  As Bette Davis once said “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night”.  And it was a nightmare because on top of that it was extremely windy.  Several times I thought we were going to go off the road.  Fortunately, there was not a lot of traffic on this road.  Mostly RV’s and trailers.  All going to Alaska as we found out when we met up with a lot of them at the RV park we are staying at in Grande Prairie.

Finally, after 247 miles and more than 6 hours we arrived at Camp Tamarack RV Park.  We are in caribou country now.  We saw lots of signs saying caribou crossing along highway 40, but we saw no caribou.

Camp Tamarack RV Park is a very nice park and finally we have Wifi and after a week without TV we finally have TV; 4 local stations out of Spokane (ABC, etc) and 4 stations out of Edmonton and a few other cable stations.  So we can catch up on US news….mostly about Trump, so we will stick with the Canadian stations.  But, oh my, Trump again.  I think we will forget about TV.

Tomorrow we leave Alberta and enter British Columbia.