Day 7 The beauty is in the eye of the beholder

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Distance driven today: 268 miles / 431 km
Cumulative distance driven: 2,212 miles / 3,560 km
Today’s trip: Jasper, Alberta, Canada to Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Hours driving in pouring rain: 1
Glaciers driven by: 17

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Today’s trip was pretty straight forward and overall enjoyable. I drove through the southern part of the Canadian Rockies, covering Jasper and Banff national park. Both parks are literally, filled with glaciers, which are clearly visible along the road. The first five or so glaciers I drove by were spectacular to watch. Enormous chunks of ice, hanging from massive pieces of granite slabs along road 93 in Alberta, made for very spectacular scenery in the morning. But once I had driven by the tenth or so glacier, it all became very predictable, and the sense of excitement vanished. Isn’t it funny how quickly we can become accustomed to something seemingly amazing and then just stop appreciating it?

At a rest stop along the road, I took a look at one of the information signs providing more details on the so called Icefields Parkway that I was driving on. The description on the sign started with “The Canadian Rockies consist of a lot of rocks. That’s why the mountain range got its name The Rockies” Now, I am not an expert in Geology, but I *think* that even I could have figured out where the name “The Rockies” come from!

As I was driving, the weather changed very fast, and within minutes, it went from a sunny cloudless sky to a dark grey cloudy cover that was pouring down with rain. Good thing that the Canadian ministry of transportation, which manages the federal Jasper national Park, had put up a sign warning about sudden weather changes on the mountainous road. This sign, somehow seemed more informative than the one about rocks and the Rockies…

When I got to the Mt. Athabasca glacier, I made a stop there and went to the visitor center. There I found out two things. First, I learned that the glacier has been retreating at an alarming rate, i.e. the glacier has retreated with over 200m since the end of the Second World War. That distance represents, in geological terms, an extreme (almost unheard of) rate of glacier retreat. And yes, most indications point to that this is due to global warming.
The second thing I found out was that, the Icefields Parkway, which I had been driving on for a few hours, apparently is “The most beautiful road in the world!”. Sure, the road, the enormous mountain sides, and the multitude of visible glaciers along the road, are beautiful. But is this really *the* most beautiful road on the planet? I somehow doubt that, even though I haven’t driven on every road on earth in order to compare with. Then again, I suspect that neither has the person in the Canadian ministry of transportation, who authored the pamphlet I was reading, done so either. Beauty is in the eye of beholder, and not in the claims of the ministry of transport.



This afternoon, I arrived in Calgary. This is the first true city of any size, since I left Fairbanks in Alaska almost a week ago, that I rode into. I therefore decided to check into a proper hotel. I picked a contemporary modern design hotel, i.e. Aloft.

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Comments

[Sean Roooney]

super cool!
Love it