Jasper AB to Rocky Mountain House AB

 

We intended to leave the Jasper area today, but almost didn't. The forecast was for heavy cloud and 100% chance of rain all day. We thought we might wait a day when the forecast was much better.

Luckily at 5am the skies were mostly blue. We were on the road by 6 under beautiful skies. This post is going to be mostly mountain pictures heading south on the Icefields Parkway, so be prepared to skim if you're tired of mountains.

On a 2018 trip to this area we intended to take the Parkway up to Jasper, but were foiled by massive smoke from wildfires. We were simply awestruck by the views today.

Whistler's is an old campground by the way, dating back to the 1970's apparently. It was shut down for a massive overhaul a few years ago, and reopened over the past couple of years. You'll see some almost overhead pictures from the SkyTram in our previous post.

A few residents (all Elk) gathered to say goodbye as we left the Whistler campground:

And we started on amazing 4+ hrs on the Parkway. We have found that most people out here don't start driving early in the morning. So from 6am to 9am we saw almost no other vehicles, it was like a private road. We're sure that's why we especially enjoyed the trip today. If you're on the road later it gets incredibly busy most days, which always makes a drive less enjoyable to us. Today we could stop at will, almost anywhere (getting off the road first of course!).

The Athabaska River is very high

Indian Paintbrush, Cath thinks

This Raven was keeping tabs on everyone

Still lots of snow left to melt at these higher elevations

Lots of melting already though

The Athabaska Glacier keeps on shrinking

Even though lots of snow this year

Once we left the main Icefield Parkway at Saskatchewan Junction we headed East on Hwy 11 towards Rocky Mountain House. The views weren't done yet. 

This was the Bighorn Reservoir we think, as there is a Bighorn dam downstream

Our traditional picture of Mount Michener

After all that touristing we decided to stop early tonight. The iOverlander app led us to an obscure park for camping, the Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site. A small park, only about 20 no-hookup sites. Nice setting though, and good facilities. We're just going to stay tonight. We're thinking we might have some issues finding camping for the next few days, over the July 1 weekend with no reservations. WalMart, here we come.