Jasper National Park

Tues. August 30 we headed north on the Ice fields Parkway to Jasper, Alberta. The Rockies at Lake Louise are part of Banff NP, but half way up the highway it turns into Jasper NP. It was a spectacular drive as we saw high mountains on both sides of the road, many of them with glaciers. The traffic is very light in the early mornings but builds in the late morning and afternoons. Although there are never very many cars. We see fewer American cars, but lots of rental campers, mainly rented by European tourists. There are also quite a few tour buses. We drove the length of the highway to the town of Jasper, set up our campsite, which we had reserved, and went into town to load up on groceries. We enjoyed the six days that we were in Lake Louise but the shopping was very limited. The town consisted of a small village with about a half a dozen shops, and only a very small grocery store. Every town has their coffee shops and bakeries, which we enjoyed. The town of Jasper is much larger than Lake Louise with many shops, two grocery stores and many highly recommended restaurants. We have been surprised at how many fine restaurants there are that feature Canadian fare-elk, bison, venison, fresh locally grown vegetables. We've had some outstanding meals, plus some great Canadian wines. The visitor information centers in each town have had a wealth of information. We have found the brochures that feature the local hikes have been very informative. We try to get out each day and do some hiking along with our car touring. There are many great drives and hikes to beautiful mountain lakes and falls.
We visited the Columbia Ice fields Center which is located about an hour's drive south of Jasper. Across the road from the center is the Athabasca glacier, which is the most easily accessible glacier in the park.
Photo 1 shows the glacier, from the center. Originally, the glacier extended to the spot where I took the photo. As you can see, the glacier has retreated quite a lot since then. We saw the same thing in Glacier NP where they estimate that all of the glaciers will be GONE between 2020 and 2030. Better get up to see them while they are still there. Specially built buses take people right onto the glacier.



Photo 2 shows Pris in front of one of those behemoths. The melt water from the Athabasca Glacier is the origin of the Athabasca River, which runs down the valley, past our campground and through the town site of Jasper.









About 20 miles south of our campground are the Athabasca Falls, which is shown in photo 3.









The 4th photo is of Maligne Lake, one of the prettiest we have seen. It is about 40 miles southeast of Jasper town site.








Early September marks the beginning of the Elk Rutting season, where the boys get very interested in the girls! The rangers warn campers about getting too close to the males, they have been known to charge even automobiles. There were elk in the campground at Jasper, we saw 6 this morning. The bulls bugle all night long, trying to entice those illusive girls.