Jasper (including Ice Fields Parkway) and Banff National Parks (including Lake Louise)
To begin where I left off on my previous post, we arrived in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, by ferry from Juneau, AK, around 1:30 a.m. The Alaska Marine Highway system is a great ride and paying for a berth/room on the ship makes sense when compared to sleeping in reclining lounge chairs (I have done both and the second is not pretty.) It didn't seem to make sense to pay for a few hours at a campground, so we decided to drive a short distance and sleep for the night at a pull-off. We then continued to Prince George, staying at the Bee Lazee RV Park for one night, bought groceries, and headed for dry camping at Jasper National Park with our fresh water tank full. (In retrospect, we could have driven to Smithers, BC and stayed there, eliminating the Prince George, BC stop as the town looked a little more inviting than the pull-off outside of Prince Rupert.)
Then as the song goes…."Over the river and through the woods, to the Canadian Rockies we go!" (went or something similar to that). For the past week, we have been exploring the Canadian Rockies from Alberta and enjoying every minute, really. This is a must stop if you are in Western Canada. Keep in mind as you plan your trip that each Canadian National Park has a park entrance fee per day of $19.60 CAN, which typically runs from the time you enter until 4 p.m. the following day.
Highlights from Jasper National Park (quieter, northern park):
· Whistler Campground (one of several in Jasper National Park) has 781 sites, most with no hookups; I suggest booking your sites WAY in advance if you want to stay in the park with any hookup as sites were all full when we were there.
· Beautiful treed sites; in-park roads need work (lots of potholes)
· Bear warnings everywhere, but overall great animal watching
· Whistler Campground was close to town of Jasper (street of restaurants, shopping)
· Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge - excellent stop - horseback riding, golf, sitting on deck
· Main attraction: Malign Canyon, Medicine Lake, and Malign Lake activities (all best when sunny and easy to reach by car)
· Second Main attraction: Ice Fields Parkway with glacier trip onto Athabasca Glacier (reminder that this is located in Jasper National Park although at the south end, about 50-60 km)
· Lots of trails, scenic drives, tramway, mountain views
We left Jasper early after staying two days and drove the Ice Fields Parkway toward Lake Louise and Banff National Park. We stopped for pictures but made sure we were ready for the first shuttle to the Athabasca Glacier (Note: If you wait too long to do various tours, the tour busses will get there first and then it plays havoc with your schedules). This is one place where a special buggy will take you onto the glacier; you can walk on it, drink the glacial waters, and take lots of pictures. There is a 30+ degree hill, but you are assured the buggy can make it! (I closed my eyes of course, while Brad would have driven the buggy if given the chance!)
After our ride, we continued to a Bow Riversedge Campground outside of Banff National Park (all sites were taken at the national park) in Cochrane, AB near Calgary. We were about 1 hour from Banff and would have liked to be in the Banff Tunnel Mountain campgrounds (I, II, or III), but they were full. We like the Bow Riversedge Campground with clean services and nice sites as we stayed there on our way north to Alaska. It is a beautiful campground, very scenic, and has a walkway along the Bow River, which comes from the mountains. The next day, we drove to the Lake Louise area, stopping to take pictures of Castle Mountain and another day to the Banff area, taking pictures of the Three Sisters. It seems all the cute mountains are named! I'm not sure what they do with the ugly ones…hmmm. We had sunny weather one day for Lake Louise while sun and rain were constantly changing as you'll see in our pictures from Banff.
Highlights from Lake Louise (in the middle of Jasper and Banff, more crowded):
· Drove around one of the top places for scenery, I think, in all of the Canadian Rockies
· Visited Beautiful Fairmont Lake Louise chateau-style hotel overlooking beautiful Lake Louise
· Paid for Afternoon High Tea overlooking lake
· Walked the Lake Shore trail for about 2-3 miles for gorgeous views
· Found a musical dinner theatre program called "Canada-Eh?" in Canmore south of Banff and enjoyed meeting local Canadians who reminded us that the debt-ceiling had better pass as what happens to the U.S. affects them! No kidding! It was fun to talk with Canadians. The show had lots of Canadian humor and music plus a wonderful dinner meal--lots of fun!
Highlights from Banff (lower park and much more crowded):
· Note to self: try to avoid coming to Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel when the Telsus Golf Tournament is just coming in or going out--crowded, crowded!
· Visited Banff Springs Hotel (Next time: take the tour of the hotel @ 3 p.m.)
· Bring kilt next time for Brad (this hotel has Scottish roots)
· Visited downtown with shops, restaurants and museums
· Rented historic bathing suits and took 1-2 hours to soak in the Banff Hot Springs--everyone else does! (Next time: bring own suits and towels)
· Took scenic drive into the wildlife area to Lake Minnewanka
As a side note: Many people mentioned to us that we just had to see the Dinosaur Provincial Park near Patricia, AB. We were able to get a camping site, so we drove there yesterday (about 3 hours from Cochrane), scheduled a two-hour bus tour to learn about the fossils everywhere, and then Brad took a two-hour photography shoot. It was interesting but very different from the Rockies. Brad's comments about the Dinosaur Provincial Park…worth a visit if you are in the area; it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site which lives up that designation; you can literally walk the preserve and find pieces of fossilized bone just from careful observation; one girl on our bus tour found a part of a dinosaur tooth (meat-eater) on just the public loop of the park; paleontologists continue researching there every day.
Leaving the Dinosaur Provincial Park, we decided to cross into the U.S. Therefore, we had to make a stop at one of the few towns between the park and customs. The previous night, I had to make strange dinner food such as fried rice with vegetables you have never seen in fried rice just to get the produce off the refrigerator shelves just in case for the border crossing. We wanted to use up our Canadian money (heavy charges to exchange funds and VISA now charges for each transaction for the conversion), so we made sure our diesel tank was full and we bought some non-food items. As you pull up, you need your vehicle registration information including license plate number and your passports. You are asked to declare fruit, vegetables, meats, and any items purchased outside the U.S. Coming into the U.S. at the borders has been tougher for us than going into Canada all three times.
We continued to Helena, MT, where we took what we thought was a cut-off for I-90. We found out that construction work was on that particular road, and we were held up over an hour. We reserved a site at a beautiful KOA in Billings, Montana, arriving about 7 p.m. after starting earlier around 7 a.m. So, for $69 (includes KOA discount), we have strong and free Wi-Fi, a pool, an onsite Pistol Pete's Restaurant (not bad food), trees, a concrete patio with picnic table, porch swing, and a fire pit. (We have yet to make a fire as many places don't permit it for fear of fires and also the spreading of various tree diseases. We have had the opportunity of making our own fire about ten times and a few of those times we could have purchased wood from the campgrounds.)
We made the decision to come back to the U.S. earlier than we anticipated because of difficulty in finding places to stay. We were going to cross and stay in Minot, ND, but all campgrounds were closed for flooding. We know the high price of the campground is unusual, but we have found that in this area as well as southern Canada, many of the cheaper campgrounds and provincial parks are full of oil men, working for six months in a particular area and taking all the sites. We talked with someone tonight, and he said many of the cheaper hotels are the same way. You might pay $130 for a room that normally costs about $50 because the oil men are taking the rooms.
Today we plan to travel to Jamestown, ND, and then head for Minnesota. Someone just said tonight that because of budget cuts, all of their rest stops and state campgrounds are shut down. Oh, great! Well, I guess we'll be back in Ohio sometime.
Hope everyone is keeping cool! We're coming home through Michigan!
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