We are now in Jasper National Park, having driven the length of the Icefields Parkway Sunday. We are here for five nights, but here are some photos from the drive and the first day looking about. 

Canada Rail

Bow Lake

Peyto Lake

Saskatchewan River

Spring Wildflowers along a path

Mount Edith Cavell

Glacier and lake at the foot of Edith Cavell

Us at Mount Edith Cavell

Mike above a mountain stream

Waterfowl Lake

Being a little astonished

In planning our trip, one of the decisions was to stay in Canada for the 4^th of July and avoid all of the dither back home. Unfortunately it turns out that Canada celebrates its liberation on July 1. It’s called Canada Day, and all about were carrying little red and white maple leaf flags for Canada Day. Jasper was shut down for Canada Day. The festivities began with a citywide pancake breakfast for $2.00 each and proceeded through the hours with parties and parades and fireworks at “about” 11:15. It turns out that we are far enough north that the night is sunlit until close to 11 each night.

Mike has not been feeling well since yesterday and so today is a very lazy day for both of us. I slept until after 7. Mike announced he was in no hurry to get up at about 7:45..

It also rained all night, which was actually a welcome relief. We have had some heat in Canada. One day in Banff it was 95, though they called it 33. We looked on the web and found the high in Austin was 93 that day. The graphs of average temperatures indicated we should plan for highs around 72 and lows in the mid 40’s. We hadn’t even seen the 50’s until this morning after the rain.

Fortunately we brought our air conditioner. But we had brought clothing for a cooler climate, so we have almost run out of shorts and short sleeve shirts. Our planning included the notion that we would have enough clothes for the 12 days in Canada without having to do laundry until we were back in the states. They have laundries here. We just figured we would run about saying, “Wow!” all the time and not have to wash clothes. And, as it turns out, doing laundry on Canada Day is not as easy as it might have seemed because of all the other goings ons.