Before we went on this trip, Cas and I got a lot of advice on what things to visit in different parts of our travels. I kept a notebook and wrote down all the best suggestions, then I looked up a bunch of them and kept a list by location of the things I wanted to look into. The trip today hit the top three items on the Jasper list. Here’s what they do- We had a very nice bus pick us up from the front door of our hotel. That bus took us to Athabaska Falls, which was gorgeous.
We left there on our bus and headed to the Columbia Ice field. There was a guide telling us about the things we saw along the way, of course, and it was all very informative. There are plenty of stories in the history of the Canadian Rockies, and we got a few of them today.
Our standard bus arrived at the ice field, and we transferred to a snow-coach. Our new driver told us we were in a machine with a 1.3 million dollar Mercedes engine. He also let us know the dimensions of the tires- they are five feet tall and three feet wide. Taller than my own car, to be sure. It was just too bizarre:
Anyhow, we took that ride down a very precarious road and on to the Athabasca glacier. We walked on the ice and drank from the small streams of water that flowed over the top. It was pretty amazing.
I hear it’s been well over 100 degrees in Dallas this week, but I digress...
When we left the glacier, we went to the Glacier Skywalk, which is a marvel of engineering over a very steep drop off. We went out and took some selfies, of course. The wind moved the cantilevered suspension platform just enough to remind us that we didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time on it. Maybe that was part of the design, as well. From there, we had a buffet lunch and a bus ride back to Jasper.
It was a perfect morning and afternoon, and we spent a little time afterward just wandering the town and picking up some groceries for our train trip. After that was done, we went to seafood restaurant that was very well reviewd in town. The reviewers were correct- the seafood was very good. The service was pretty mediocre, and the atmosphere would have been a whole lot better if the man at the next table had bothered to take his volume down a few decibels or permit one of the other five people in his party to get a word in edgewise. No matter, though, when we left, we had eaten some really good seafood. We had lobster, shrimp and salmon. It was all pretty spectacular. Tomorrow, we have another tour activity- a wildlife viewing with a lake cruise. Should be pretty great, eh?
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