Jasper, Alberta sits in the middle of Jasper National Park, first preserved as a park in 1907 and in 1984 included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks. Jasper Park Lodge is a ten-minute ride from the town, a profusion of cedar cabins and lodge buildings, with a top-draw golf course and gardener-inspiring vistas. Having left the confines of VIA Rail, we were now on Rocky Mountaineer time, no more nights on the train, just bus tours and grand old hotels.
Western Canada was in the midst of, what was to them, a heat wave. Such being an unusual occurrence, the rooms weren’t air-conditioned, but that didn’t present a problem for heat-hardened Texans. Not that we wouldn’t have welcomed the a/c, but 90 degrees in the afternoon quickly dissolved into the 40s by morning. We hadn’t felt that in a while!
Over a period of five days we travelled via bus from Jasper to Lake Louise to Banff. We learned about the special wildlife highway overpasses which drastically cut the number of animal and car encounters. We experienced a “bear jam” caused by a little black bear foraging on the side of the road and carloads of idiots scrambling out to take photos. I tried for a shot out of the bus window, but it’s awfully dark. Poor bear.
We visited roaring water falls and lakes so pristine and smooth they didn’t appear real. I took photos of the signs just so we might be able to sort out Pyramid Lake from Bow Lake from Emerald from… but inevitably they melted together in our minds and I’ll just post the best of the best photos together here.
Again, we left no tourist thing undone. The Athabasca Glacier Ice Fields stretch across the Continental Divide, sending melting waters and rivers into Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans. A tour was included and we slushed our way off the special bus to stand on the glacier and shiver.
If Jasper was resplendent in its forests and craggy mountains, Lake Louise has to be tops in eye-appeal. The Chateau Lake Louise gets our vote for most beautiful place visited. We arrived at the beginning of a rare hail event, a little shower of surprise to those in canoes on the lake. It didn’t last five minutes. We enjoyed the old photos of the building which graced the walls of the public areas of the hotel. From small beginning through a devastating fire in the 1920s, the hotel has endured. Leaving the gym early in the morning, I caught the rising sun tipping color on the glacier. I don’t know that it gets better—or more beautiful—than this.
We were nearing the end of our journey, with only Banff and two days on the Rocky Mountaineer left. Banff delighted us with its vibrant downtown (“Hello, tourist!”) and we took an afternoon off from touring to visit the shops and the Whyte Museum.
Then it was time to board the Rocky Mountaineer, get a seat in a dome car (think top class travel), glide down the spiral staircase to the dining car, hear folklore stories and history from the wonderful hosts, and go from light to dark and back again through the much-vaunted spiral tunnels.
We spent the night between Banff and Vancouver in Kamloops. The brochure had described the accommodations as “moderate,” and that’s a fair assessment. However, from hearing our fellow passengers who’d traveled that way before, we were picturing a wide place in the road with little interest. Instead, the mountains opened up to reveal a city of 70,000, stretched along a valley with myriad hotels and restaurants and what appeared to be a vibrant tourist industry, and, as our guide pointed out, two dozen golf courses.
Late in the afternoon of our second Rocky Mountaineer day, we pulled into Vancouver. Our luggage, as it had been in Kamloops the night before, was already in our hotel room. This night we were staying at the ultra-modern Fairmont Pacific Rim, built near the Olympic flame for the 2010 Winter Games. The room lights and a/c were controlled by the iPad on the desk. There was a TV in the bathroom mirror that you didn’t really know it was there until you turned it on.
We had to say good-bye to the Rawlings and wish them safe passage home to Australia. On the trains we had met fellow Texans, many Australians (was anyone left Down Under?), a lively set of cousins from Barbados, and many Canadians.
I can’t say that too soon our journey was over. It was a long, tiring 18 day trip. However, we enjoyed every minute of it and are so glad to join those who’ve made it across Canada by rail. It is a beautiful country—we have 500 photographs to prove it!
LINKS:
JASPER NATIONAL PARK:
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/ab/jasper/index.aspx
Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, UNESCO:
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/304
Whyte Museum
http://www.whyte.org
Animal Bridges over highways:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/07/worlds-coolest-animal-bridges/