Lake Louise to Jasper AB

We left Lake Louise about 8am, 11C, cool and wet. It had rained almost all night, lots of puddles around. The interior roads are well graveled though. It was a nice stay, good to hike and bike around the cg.

We drove up the scenic road from Lake Louise to Jasper, the Icefields Parkway. A park pass is required for all vehicles on this road. It would have cost us $9.60 per day, each! At $20/day it doesn't take long to make a big dent in an annual pass, so we got the annual Family pass for $136 after all. It's good at almost (!) all of the Canadian National parks. 

This Icefields Parkway drive is a really nice drive, world-famous even. I have to say that we both enjoyed our recent Yellowstone experience more, although that's likely unpatriotic to say. Yellowstone is so different from anything we've seen before.

We stopped for a hike at the Athabasca Glacier. It continues to shrink at an increasing rate, so it's more of a hike than it was, not too many years ago. 

On the drive up to Jasper we saw a number of mountain sheep, 2 black bears, a grizzly, and a mountain goat. Lots of trees and mountain views.

There's a black bear way over there

Two sheep crossed in front of us. See the second head on the right? He made it too.

Apparently they REALLY wanted some of that green grass on the other side

We arrived near Jasper (town) to camp at the Whistlers cg. It's a huge cg, almost 800 sites. Good thing it's big, as it's the only cg open and was pretty busy! Unserviced site again, 3 nights @ $27.50. Very nice sites, large, wooded, quiet.
 
There are only 2 central shower buildings for the whole huge park, right beside each other near the office area.

We had a good browse around Jasper and got some groceries and gas. Jasper gas was a pleasant surprise, being lower than the BC prices (BC, like Quebec, has a provincial surcharge on gas). Higher than the usual prices we've seen in Alberta, but still – not the gouging I expected. The groceries were somewhat reasonable too.  Cath enjoyed the local quilt shop, and we stayed up reading outside without a light (!) until almost 10pm.