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Published: August 25th 2011
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Saturday, August 6, 2011. Snaring River Campground, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. Rained in night. 55 degrees this morning at 9:45 with both blue sky and lots of clouds. Starting mileage at 14270.
Heading back down to the main road, we saw the same “pinto bear” at about the same spot eating away at the berries. We then drove up a side road behind the town of Jasper to a couple of lakes that the park ranger had suggested we might like to see. There were several loons on the lakes along with a number of people in canoes and row boats.
We drove back into town and went to the library. They charged $2.50 per hour to use their internet connection even with us using our own computers. We figured that this was cheaper and less fattening than going to an internet café and buying snacks in order to use their connection. Also bought $10. worth of pocketbooks and left some books we had both finished. We are spreading books from one library to another as we go along.
We filled up the tank with gas before leaving Jasper. Gas cost $1.219 a liter and she took 83.6
liters for a total of $101.93. The mileage at this point was 14291.
A little ways down the Icefields Parkway we encountered a “wild animal has been spotted traffic jam”. Cars were parked on both sides of the road and people were out of their cars and standing by the guardrail to watch a grizzly bear walk across gravel islands of the Athabasca River to eat the berries growing on the side of the riverbank. No one, including yours truly, was standing a football field away from the animal as is asked of visitors by the park services folks. The bear finally ambled on into the thicker brush and the jam broke apart as everyone drove off for other adventures.
Our next adventure was to drive a few more miles and stop to walk down the trail and look at the Athabasca River Falls. The Falls are well worth the stop and the short walk as the whole wide and very full at this point river, cascades into a narrow gully of rock and falls then further into a canyon. The park service has built boardwalks and bridges over, across, and along this gorge so you can really
view the falls up close and personal.
We continued to drive south on the Parkway, stopping to look at the mountains, icefields, glaciers, and lakes at various pull-outs. We pulled into the Icefield Center and watched the people climb up the Columbia Icefield with guides and/or pay to ride up and down the glacier in long ice-mobile type machines. This huge glacier is very close to the road and is the source of the Columbia River that flows down from here as a creek and continues to build until it is the wide river between the states of Washington and Oregon. This area is the end of Jasper National Park and the beginning of Banff. Four Km. further south we crossed over Sunwapta Pass and then further on crossed the Saskatchewa River. Along this river between 1799 and 1875 five different fur trading posts existed.
After driving about 20 km more, we came to the campground at Waterfowl Lakes where we had planned to spend the night. Picked out a spot, after driving along the lake hoping in vain, it turned out, for an empty lakeside spot, paid our $21.50 at the self-registration station and settled in for
the night.
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