Today’s adventure involved a lovely trip along the world-famous Icefields Parkway. The drive itself from Golden BC to Jasper Park should only take about 4 hours, but with the numerous scenic stops along the way, it’s very easy to make an entire day of the drive.
First stop was Emerald Lake to get another look at just how high up we hiked the day prior. We also got a good look at the Natural Bridge, as well as took a walk down an old fire road to a supposed salt lick where wildlife likes to gather (never found it), but we did see a neat spot at the confluence of three rivers, making for a pretty mixing of different water colors.
Once on the Icefields Parkway, we pulled off at many of the pulloffs. We enjoyed that the crowds seemed to thin the later in the day and the closer to Jasper we got. We stopped at the Columbia Icefields and walked up to the glacier (no guided tour for us, since we have just recently hiked Fox Glacier in NZ). It’s so sad to see how rapidly the Athabasca Glacier is receding it’s predicted that it will be gone within the next 100 years. We should all be a little (or a lot) kinder to the environment….
JD shot an awesome panorama for posterity.
We continued our journey and made a couple more pullouts for some photo opps, and arrived in the town of Jasper around 7pm. We are staying at a lovely B&B that’s a steal of a deal and the folks are suuuuuuper nice. Case and point – when we told them we told them we were going fishing, the guy made some phone calls to his fishing buddies for tips and to see if any of them would like to come out with us (some of them are retired and in his words “always looking to take people out on the lake”). I am still blown away by how incredibly nice and easy-going Canadians are!!! Move over Southern Hospitality, the Great White North could give you a run for you money ;^)
We went to the sporting goods store in town to pick up our fishing gear that we had rented and hope to have an early start Brook & Rainbow Trout Fishing on Lake Maligne. (Wish us luck!) Before retiring for the night, we had the most amazing pizza at a little place in town. Expensive pizza, but fabulous pizza – we came home very happy and ready to catch some fishes tomorrow!
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