Canadian Holiday
- Day 5 : Friday 12th September
After two nights with David and Eulene (and accompanying hospitality and fellowship), today was the day to start heading westwards. But before we left, their daughter Bee arrived with her 3¾ children (the ¾ was born a few days later!) for a farewell chat. It was so nice to see them – the previous evening had been our generation only, but though we’d seen David & Eulene’s grandchildren on photo and film, this was our only meeting with them … maybe another time, or as we said, when they come to visit the UK. In conversation the previous evening, we’d mentioned “Albert and the Lion”[1], and Bernard tried to remember the poem (from his schooldays) for Laura – we were able to email the “proper words” later. The customary photos were taken, and farewells given.
Route 16 took us more or less all the way into Jasper. Leaving David and Eulene’s it was a dual carriageway, nearer Jasper it became single carriageway, but always wide and pleasantly free of heavy traffic. We stopped at …… for a picnic lunch (thanks, Eulene), eating it in the car because it was raining. The Rocky Mountains first appeared as a haze on the horizon, later becoming distant hills, and much later materializing as mountain peaks. At some stage along the highway we saw a vaguely greyish creature by the side of the road – and later worked out that it must have been a coyote.
As we approached Jasper and started descending we noticed two interesting things; firstly, the river was a bright turquoise blue – we had seen travel photos of turquoise lakes, but hadn’t expected the rivers to be so bright. Then we saw three “levels” on one hillside – trees at the bottom, rocks and scree above, then snow at the top. We also saw a hillside burning – for a few weeks before leaving the UK, forest fires had made worldwide headlines, and we had feared that we would miss out of the majestic scenic views; but this was the only time we saw any smoke rising from a hillside.
A few miles out of Jasper we turned off the main road, to visit Maligne Lake (pronounced Maleen), one of the notable tourist attractions of the area. The side road crossed the river and went up into the mountains, getting gradually narrower. Eventually we hit the snow line – snow on the tree branches and ground, and shortly after that found the lake. It’s a mystical place, with snow caps on most sides; the pleasure boats made a splash of colour in a grey-green-white landscape. We walked a short distance along the lakeside, observing some birds foraging and twittering in the scrub bushes – later discovered that these were aureole chickadees. Back to the restaurant and had a drink and snack, but noticed that the visitors outside were finding something of interest – it was a moose and calf, who had come to the lakeside and were foraging the bushes, so out with the camera and joined the snappers; they seemed very calm and used to tourists, and happily munched and drank from the lake, and posed for the cameras. Some years before, Adrian had entertained some local youngsters with tales of “Maurice the Moose”, and it was nice to see a real one.
Then back down the road towards Jasper – Katie saw a white-tailed deer by the side of the road, but my mind was perhaps more on the bends. So we found our way to our B&B – a very nice house, where our room was in the basement (just like the spare room at Eulene’s). Jasper centre was a fairly busy place, but we found a restaurant easily and enjoyed a short walk in the town centre.