The Icefield Parkway

Before we left Jasper, we were entertained by a young buck who really liked our campsite.

He lay out in the grass right by Maxine.

You can see how close he was.

The Icefields Parkway is a 143 mile drive from Jasper to Lake Louise and parallels the Continental Divide.  What can we say?  This was just an astonishingly beautiful day.  The scenery had us oohing and aahing over the mountains and glaciers as much as the trees, the wildflowers, the rivers and waterfalls.  Every turn took our breath away-literally!  We woke up really early so that we could be on time to meet Susan and David, our friends from Marblehead, MA, who were going to meet us in Banff.  We woke up at 5:30, which hasn’t happened very often since I retired.  Our first stop was at Athabasca Falls.  The sun was just coming up.

Athabasca Falls at first light

My other sweetheart and me along the way

A raging narrows 

As we were driving along, we heard a strange sound and stopped at the next (only!) place to stop -Sunwapta Falls Resort.  We were missing 3 of 4 lug nuts that hold on the decorative hub cap on one of our tires (we had just bought all new tires in Washington!).  The tire looked kind of flat so we decided not to take a chance on driving another 2 hours and we didn't want to go back to Jasper-another 45 minutes. We called AAA and they said they could be there in 3 hours!  So much for being on time for Susan and David!  Boo and I took a walk to Sunwapta Falls which was just beautiful while Jim did some work on the computer.

Maxine's bad hub cap and tire

Lovely deck with Maxine in background-Sunwapta Falls Resort-
we were so lucky to land here!

Boo, smelling the flowers 

Sunwapta Falls

We could get intermittent email usage in the gift shop, so I stood in the T-shirt aisle and wrote a few emails.  We had a lovely breakfast and got free coffee from a sweet waitress who was feeling our pain.  To make a long story short, it was a delightful several hours here, the AAA guy came and made a temporary fix on the tire and we took off.  Beautiful scenery was everywhere.

Do these people ever change clothes?

We stopped at the Icefield Centre but were disappointed that their visitor center was closed for renovations – only the tour ticket areas and the restaurants were open.  We knew I would rather leave this world than go out on the latest tourist attraction:  a see-through walk like the one at the Grand Canyon.

and we couldn't see the point of spending $100 to go out on the ice cat to see the glacier up close, we settled for the incredible view from the deck of the Ice Centre.

The Athabasca Glacier which has receded about a mile and a
half over the last hundred years due to climate change.

We couldn't resist this picture of Boo on a Grizzly.

We couldn't imagine that the scenery could be any better from the Icefields Centre to Banff, but, take a look:

Waterfalls are everywhere!

Again, ecstatic over the color of the rivers-this
was the Saskatchewan

The Continental Divide

Peytoe Lake-the most beautiful lake I have ever seen.

Couldn't help showing another view of this one_
Peytoe Lake

Bow Lake

Had to put up another of Bow, too.

When we hit Saskatchewan River Crossing, we had a hint of what was to come.  A wildfire had started in that section of the Banff National Forest.  It had just started 4 days earlier and was in an area that was a prescribed burn area-Mother Nature beat them to it!

As we know in Colorado, Mother Nature's fires are a healthy
thing for forests.  Here, the spruce trees will be replaced with
lodgepole pines and aspens which will bring diversity to the
plant community and will be a good habitat for grizzlies and
black and brown bears and birds.  Some will experience habitat
loss but the fire is going to be a good thing for the ecosystem.

The only downside to the fire is that we wont be seeing those bright blue skies for the rest of the time we are in Canada.  But, for a few more hours along the highway to Banff:

Vermillion Lakes-right at the Banff exit