Jasper's Awesome Scenery

On the morning after our arrival at the Jasper Park Lodge we had a scheduled half-day tour of the area, with the rest of the day free. As mentioned in the last post, we used that time to relax and catch up on the blog. Now we're catching up again with photos from the Jasper tour

The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge is over 100 years old, but started out more like a tent camp than a hotel. Now it has a very nice main lodge and almost all of the accommodations are in smaller buildings nearby. Nothing really fancy, but quite comfortable nonetheless. It also has one of the best resort golf courses in the country, one we'd love to come back to play. As well, the lodge grounds are so extensive that it isn't out of the ordinary to spot some of the local animal population.

 

The golf course stretches into this little peninsula in the lake.
Would be had to keep your mind on your game!

This is a 16-point buck Elk, referring to the number of
prongs on his antlers. A huge animal. We may have
seen him on the way out the next morning, too, but
the Elk we saw was too far away to tell.

Our tour, though only about 4 1/2 hours long, had us seeing some gorgeous sites. We'll let the photos describe the experience. Western Canada really has to be seen to be believed!

Medicine Lake:

A large area around the lake had been burned by a forest fire
that started from a lightning strike. It will take the
better part of 60 years before it looks like the rest of
the forest again, but fire is how these
extensive forests regenerate themselves and
kill off diseases, so they are a good and natural event.

Maligne Canyon:

Bow Valley Overlook

Driving between sights, we noticed a few cars stopped beside the road and someone with a BIG telephoto lens getting out for a slightly closer look. It turns out they were watching Mama Bear and a couple of cubs foraging for food. Of course, we stopped, too, and watched for a few minutes. Of course, none us were silly enough to try to leave the bus - not that the driver would have let us!

  

Pyramid Lake:

Lake Patricia:

Moving on to Lake Louise on Thursday morning, our bus ride for this relatively short distance still took us from 9:00 in the morning until about 4:00 in the afternoon, with a number of stops, of course. The pictures from this drive will be on the next post.