Wednesday August 19, 2015
Today we got up early, packed up, and sadly left Banff. We pulled out of town at 6 am because we knew we had a long day ahead of us. Our destination for the day was Jasper, but we had planned a stop along the way at the Columbia Icefields Centre, including timed ticket entry to visit the glacier there. We couldn’t be late.
The sun was just coming up as we left town and hadn’t yet peeked over the mountains by the time we made it to Peyto Lake. It was only about 3 degrees Celsius so we hopped out of the car for a quick look and a photo, but didn’t take long. Back on the road, the scenery started to get more and more impressive with every passing kilometer.
Eventually we made it to the Columbia Icefields Discovery Centre, and got our first view of the Athabasca glacier across the road. We took the ‘Snocoach’ on the tour that drives you up onto the glacier itself. This was actually quite fun – the grade of the road that the Snocoach drives up is incredibly steep. We brought our water bottles with us and all took a drink of the fresh glacier water before our tour ended.
We continued along the road, and there were lots of picnic spots and pull-offs for scenic views that we took advantage of. We stopped to eat lunch at Tangle Creek Falls. We did some rock hopping in the stream and hiked up the hillside here to stretch our legs.
We continued on towards Jasper. The area became increasingly remote, and the scenery, increasingly dramatic. There were now snow-capped peaks all around us. We stopped again at two of the most iconic viewpoints along the highway, Sunwapta Falls and Athabasca Falls. At each spot we hiked a bit to take in the best views.
Almost 10 hours after leaving Banff, we finally pulled into Jasper. We were staying in a cabin at the Pine Bungalows property just outside of town. The bungalow we got was a bit worn around the edges, but located in a beautiful riverside setting. We spotted several elk at the river during our stay.
We cleaned up from our long day of travel and hiking at the cabin before heading into town. We had dinner at Earl’s and I’m pretty sure I recall Chad having an elk burger. We walked around the town site for a bit before returning to the cabin for the night.
Cook Family Travels 