Hello Rockies, Again!

We left Grande Prarie at about 10:00 and headed down Alberta 40 south towards Jasper. The road is a logging road and it atarted out fairly straight and flat, and I thought that we may be having the same kind of ride we had the day before. But after about ten miles, began rolling over small hills and we were soon twisting through tall stands of pine trees. The forest was right next to the road on my left, and trimmed back to maybe 150 yards on my right which made it easier to scan for wildlife. We seldom saw other vehicles, maybe a few motorcycles and about twice as many logging trucks. I thought it was odd that there were not any RVs on this road, has it cuts off about 100 miles heading to Jasper than the route through Calgary.

Before too long, the grades on the hills began to increase and the road overlooked the valley below. I could see some mountains far off to my left, but they were shrouded in a fairly thick fog, even though the sun was trying to shine through and it was after noon. As we approached Grand Cache, our first fuel stop, we decended into the valley quite quickly. The road met up with a river on the left, and a major power plant on its shores. This was another oddity for me, since we had traveled nearly 100 miles with seeing any houses. The onlt thin I could think of is that no one wanted a power plant in their backyard, so this is where they put it. While fueling up, we talked to the gas station attendant (no self-serve in Canada) about the fog. Turns out that it wasn't fog, but smoke from wildfires burning in British Columbia.

We saddled back up and continued south for about 40 miles before the smoke cleared and we regained the views we had been used to. This section of the highway was pretty much the same has the first section, although we did begin to see motorhomes heading north. Soon, we hit Alberta 93 and headed towards the park. Almost immediately after entering the park, we saw an elk eating right along the side of the road and two more maybe 50 yards off. A family of goats were grazing a few miles down. Each time, we had to wait for all of the tourists to get out of the way so that we could get a picture.

Jasper National Park is just simply spectacular. We went through the Northern Rockies on the Alaska Highway, but the Rocky Mountains here were not the same. They are truely rocky, and at times it seemed you could reach out and touch them while riding down the road. We were treated to snow capped mountains, glaciers, turquios-colored streams and lakes. I am sure the pictures I took (so many as we road down the road that I drained the camera battery again) are not going to do the park any justice. You will just have to take my word that it was another splendid day of riding!

The park joins Banff National Park, with no real markings that you have entered it. Towards the southern end of Banff National Park is Lake Louise, where we had planned to camp for the night. We pulled in to set up camp earlier than we had in previous days, only to learn that the campground was full. We were given the option of staying at the bear-infested Protection Mountain campground, which has no shower but does have a central food locker to store all the stuff a bear would want to eat. Great, now what will a bear chose to eat now that all of the food is locked up? It can't hurt that Jeff is a lawyer (great bear food), and he was told that he could accompany me on this trip only if he slept in his tent with his boots on and the laces tied together if we were to run into this situation. There will be no litigation on this point...

We are off to cross the border, where gas is sure to be less than the $4.00+ a gallon we have been spending since arriving in Canada.