These are photos from our last day at Glacier National Park:

A moose Calf at St. Mary River.

Tour boat on St. Mary Lake. Note that many of the trees on the hill are dead. Pine Beetles have been attacking many western forests and are changing the face of the Parks.

Doe and Yearling at the side of the road to Two Medicine, in Glacier.

Mike at Running Eagle Falls on the Two Medicine River.

River rocks in the Two Medicine River.

Two Medicine Lake.

An Aphrodite Fritillary Butterfly in a meadow at Two Medicine Lake.

Dennis at Two Medicine.

Unidentified Flower at Two Medicine.

Red-Naped Sapsucker at Two Medicine.

The drive on the Icefields Parkway from Jasper to Lake Louise was amazing. More glaciers, more snow-capped peaks, more thundering waterfalls, more impossibly colored lakes, more alpine wildlife.

Athabasca Glacier

Loon on Bow Lake

Black Bear on the side of the road

Castle Mountain and the Bow River

Lake Louise is a glacier melt lake at the base of towering mountains. The color of the water is turquoise. The lake was named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria.

 

The lake is an extremely popular tourist attraction with thousands of tourists visiting it on summer days. We mostly avoided the crowds by visiting the lake early in the morning and in the evening. 

Lake Louise

Moraine Lake

Dennis at Lake Louise

Clarks Nutcracker at Lake Louise

Fortunately, our campground near the village of Lake Louise is in a quiet pine forest alongside the Bow River. On our last day in the Canadian Rockies we went back to the town of Banff where we soaked in the hot springs pool and took a gondola to the top of a mountain overlooking the town.

Banff Gondola atop Sulphur Mountain

 

View of Banff from atop Sulphur Mountain 

 

Jasper Canada was the furthest north we have come on this trip. We have each observed that this is probably as far north as we will ever get. This may have been our trip to Alaska. It was very nice, if somewhat more warm than expected. Heat waves have a way of happening anywhere.

It was lovely anyway. And spring-like anyway. And we visited as much of it as we could in the time we had.

Paint Brushes have been in season for much of our journey, as we have moved northward. They seem to have become this trip’s official flower. But we don’t remember ever seeing yellow Paint Brushes before Jasper.

And snow capped mountains. One could get tired of snow capped mountains. But there were also plenty of bare stone and tree covered mountains.

And wildlife.

We went to a hot springs to soak and play – No Photos – it was a very gray day and the place was crowded but not near full. It was about a 60 mile side trip and everyone loved the 40 C waters. Then there were cooler pools of 38, 25 and 20 C for a break from the heat.

We went to several water falls. Some were tall and elegant and fragile. Some shook the ground and thundered like Niagara.

We hiked many woods. And found many lakes. And you would not believe the rock formations.

We “flew” to the top of Mount Whistler for a bird’s eye view of the region. It was a cloudy day and clouds were moving all about us.

This is the view Eastward from Mount Whistler. The village in the center is Jasper. The white stripe is the Athabasca River, which is white this time of year from what they call rock flour in the glacier melt water. Every body of water had unique colors from the kind of stone that was being ground up by its parent glacier. In the woods at the lower right, you may see little white spots in the trees. Those are white RVs and tents in our campground.

We are now camping in Lake Louise, which is about 150 miles south, back in Banff National Park and will post another update in a few days.

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.