Jasper-Day 2

Today is a rainy day. Cold and rainy...and it didn't get off to a real good start. To begin with Don spent an hour on the phone trying to get his lost cell phone shipped, #1, to Canada, and #2 to a RV park where we will be staying in a few days.

It was really frustrating, because after he would spend a lot of time going through all the automated stuff and finally reaching a live person, the call would drop off and he would have to start all over again from scratch. This happened FOUR TIMES. One right after the other.


Finally, after getting a supervisor on the line, he got the call completed and hopefully the phone will be delivered to the RV park tomorrow. The park is supposed to call us when it arrives. Stay tuned on this one.

An hour later, it is still raining and still cold. We decide to drive to see a couple waterfalls not terribly far from here. It was a fairly short walk from the car to the falls and we realized it was one of those wet, bone-chilling kind of days when a hike was definitely NOT going to happen.

However, the falls were quite impressive. Both falls were on the Athabasca River. The first was Athabasca Falls.

Again, we are amazed at the turquoise color of the water caused by the minute rock particles from the glaciers called, 'glacial flour.' Of course when the water is thundering (and it DOES thunder) down the face of the falls, it is white, but when I turn around to where it is flowing more smoothly, and once again it is this beautiful blue-green.

After this we went down to Sunwapta Falls. It was a little bit longer and much steeper walk down to the falls, but once again it was a huge thundering of water.

There were also signs about how people get careless (or crazy) and every year a couple people go over the falls and of course, don't survive. Hard to imagine anyone would do that, but obviously they do.

/

Still not in the mood for a hike with the cold rain coming down, we saw a lake on the map on the other side of Jasper and decided to explore that.

On the way there we were stopped by two more 'Sheep Jams.' This time larger groups of sheep.

One group had 35-40 sheep in it. They were on both sides of the road, getting drinks out of the lake and then strolling across the highway and climbing the rocks on the other side...which they apparently thought they owned as whenever they decided, they would just walk across the highway and it was 'Driver Beware.'

By that time we determined that this particular lake was not especially interesting and we were still chilled, so we opted to go back over to the Jasper Park Lodge where they have a roaring fire in a huge fireplace for a latte and onion rings. So we kicked back there for a while before heading back to the RV.

On the way back we did see a couple cow elks, but nothing as spectacular as the bull elk from yesterday.

I took a picture of the front of the lodge. The roof line is completely lined with huge baskets of blooming flowers. And of course there are enormous flower baskets hanging everywhere. It is really pretty, but I keep wondering who has to water all of them.

Right now it is 4:15 pm and the sun is beginning to break through and the rain has stopped. Don has built a campfire and we are sitting by that for a while.

Tomorrow is another travel day. We are leaving Jasper National Park and driving through Yoho National Park to Golden, British Columbia.

I had never heard of Yoho Park before this. It is a fairly small park and except for the Trans Canadian Highway 1 that dissects the park, there is only a couple other roads within the park, and those are fairly short. Since we will be driving the big rig,

I don't imagine we will be stopping for much till we get to Golden, but I will be hanging out the windows to take any pictures I can get...weather permitting.