A Week in Jasper! Does Life Get Any Better?

We decided to spend 6 nights in Jasper, as we have been moving so much for a lot of this trip and we liked the campground.  It has been delightful to have the time to be in the woods, to bike into town occasionally, to walk by the Athabasca River and enjoy the elk, the birds, the breeze and the quiet.  We are never bored.  In fact, as hard as it is to believe, Jim and I are doing a great job of being constantly in each other’s pockets.  We always seem to have something to talk about and things to do.  Occasionally one of us takes a walk with Boo or goes biking while the other does something else, and we enjoy that alone time, too. 

I rode my bike into town to view the very unpretentious museum that had a great bookstore, showed a video of the history of Jasper, the rise of the Hudson Bay Company and many native art objects.  I got a little lost going in, so thought I’d better take a taxi back to the campground.  The cab driver got a few laughs out of my situation.  It has been quite a long time since I have ridden a bike.

Not exactly expert looking

The trail brought me right by the Athabasca River
on my way to town.

My destination:  Jasper's Museum

The next day we drove by the famous and expensive Jasper Lake Lodge which is huge and looks like great fun.  There are shops and golf courses, many restaurants and walking and biking trails.

Jasper Lake Lodge

Their beautiful terrace dining room overlooking the lake

Next was a stop at Medicine Lake where, apparently, all of the water oozes out through the underground………. I have to apologize again for oohing and ahhing over the color of the water everywhere up here.  But it is mind boggling!

One of our favorite spots here is Maligne Lake.  It is the second largest glacial lake in the world!  They make quite a business of renting canoes and giving tourists rides in glass bottom boats but we were content to walk around the lake a bit, have a delightful lunch on the deck, and then head down the road to Maligne Canyon to hike. 

Along the way, we saw the most incredible thing:  a mama black (yes, the black bears are often brown) bear and her cub-right to the side of Maxine.  They paid no attention to us at all but they sure made our day.

This is from inside the car!  Pretty darned close.

They seemed much more interested in berries
than in us.  Boo was growling at them but
they weren't phased by his toughness.

There were all kinds of signs warning to beware of caribou, but we never did see any, sorry to say.

Maligne Canyon is something to experience!  You walk down along the river on a nice path and some very steep steps.  It is a slot canyon with a torrent of water coming through, shaping the sides of the canyon and tumbling down into wonderful waterfalls.  There are a series of bridges that cross the canyon—I almost felt sick crossing them as the water is so far down below that you can barely see it.

The wild rose of Alberta

You can barely see the bottom of these canyons.

See how scary that bridge looks!

The color of the water again is just beautiful,
especially with all the greens and rusts and
black and white rocks.

There's the water!

And here we are, catching our breath for a moment.

Our last two days in Jasper were equally wonderful as we didn’t stray far from home.  Home being Whistler’s Campground, named for the hoary marmot which we see every now and then making his very distinctive whistling sound.  We hiked over to the Athabasca River where we had a little snack and sat by the river just bathing it all in.

A beautiful path through the woods from
the campground

The pale ice blue Athabasca

Such a nice day for this walk

Now is that something?  Or what?

Cairns someone had built in the river

Our favorite hiker

Hate to say good-bye

Look who greeted us when we returned!

A lovely mama elk

We have met some very nice and some very odd campers over the past months but we haven’t met any as funny as last night’s neighbors.  A very big Japanese family moved in next to us.  We were thoroughly entertained watching this multi-generational family (probably about 15-20 people of all ages) setting up tents, blowing up air mattresses, putting up a kitchen area under another tent, cooking dinner, etc.  They even had a vacuum cleaner with which they cleaned out the tents.  Then a couple of the older boys went to the bathroom and came back to their family saying something in Japanese.  No one seemed particularly upset but, all of a sudden people started taking air mattresses out of the tents and walking down the path.  Older women picked up the many pots of food that were being prepared and walked down the path.  Then other things-clothes, tablecloths, bags, etc. were put into their cars and they drove off.  Lastly, several of the older boys and men came by and un-staked the tents and carried them off.  We couldn’t resist asking-they had moved into the wrong site!  We thought it was just astonishing that no one was particularly bothered by this turn of events.  They just carried on, some even smiling.  What a lesson for us!