Day 6 – Hinton to Calgary
Wow! Today was
the highlight of the trip so far.
Once we entered Jasper, the forest seemed to come
alive. Within 1 mile from the
entrance, we came upon a two elk.
We joined the dozen or so cars stopped on the side of the road to take
pictures for a few minutes, then moved onto the next animal sighting, which was
never more than a few minutes away.
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| Elk at Jasper entrance. |
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| another Elk grazing on the grass. |
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| mama big horn sheep and her baby. |
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| Going for a stroll down the highway... |
Our first Jasper activity was to go to the horse stables
where we bought an hour horse ride through the forests of Jasper. The kids were very excited to show off
their horse riding skills from Echo Ranch…everyone had a good time, and it was quickly
shaping up to be a memorable day.
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| Ashleigh and Alex on their horses and ready to go! |
After riding the horses, we made our way to downtown Jasper took
a stroll down the main street. We decided
to eat lunch at the Jasper Brewing Company. After sampling a few beers and eating some good sandwiches,
we toured some of the souvenir shops and caved into the kids’ pleadings for
some homemade fudge.
After getting back on the road, we found ourselves on the
Icefields Parkway, the long stretch of road connecting the Jasper and Banff
National Parks. To say it was an
unbelievable drive is an understatement.
The pictures don’t do justice to how huge the mountains are, and every
lake we passed seemed to get more and more blue in color.
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| just one of our many views from the car on our drive today. |
The first lake we stopped for was Peyto
Lake, a small lake a little bit out of the beaten path requiring about a ½ mile
hike up a steep hill to get to the lookout point. The water was such a deep turquoise in color it looked
almost impossible to be true… almost like someone messed the color up when they
were developing the pictures.
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| The amazing turquoise color of Peyto Lake. |
After Peyto Lake, we travelled a little further to Lake
Louise, the most famous of the Banff lakes, and home to the very classy Fairmont
Hotel at $600/night. Needless to
say, that wasn’t our hotel.
However, we stayed long enough to marvel at how the massively large
mountains circled around the amazingly blue lake.
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| Lake Louise. |
Even though it was starting to get late, we pressed on to
the third of the lakes we wanted to see, Moraine Lake, a short but windy road
leading to a small observation area.
All three lakes were so different from each other, but each one was so
cool and unique that we’re glad that we did all three.
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| Moraine Lake. |
After finishing the Icefields Parkway, we passed through
Banff and Canmore on our way to Calgary without stopping, knowing we were
returning to Canmore tomorrow. We
arrived in Calgary after 9pm (Alex had already had enough excitement for the
day, as he was passed out in the backseat). One more unexpected surprise for the day, is the hotel we
were staying at was right across the street from the Calgary Tower. After a long day, everyone was
exhausted, and happy that tomorrow’s plan was for minimal driving (just back to
Canmore), having spent the last 6 days averaging around 300 miles a day.
Tomorrow – Canmore
Wildlife sightings -
Grizzly Bear -1
Black Bear – 3
Big Horn Sheep – 32 (6 lambs)
Elk - 6
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