We left Field after another tasty hotel breakfast, sat by their fire as it was a little colder this morning.
The plan for the day was a 4-5 hour drive along the Icefield Parkway, which connects Lake Louise with Jasper, and is the biggest non-polar icefield. After a quick stop at the spiral tunnel, where the long trains do two figure of 8 loops INSIDE the mountain, we stopped to collect some rations at Lake Louise, and fill up with fuel as there was only one filling station on the Parkway and was renowned for being very expensive!
The drive along the Parkway was punctuated with lakes, glaciers and waterfalls. We stopped to hike up to a couple of viewing points at Bow Lake and Peyto Lake first, finding an incredible wildflower meadow after taking a shortcut.
A little further on, we stopped at Waterfowl Lake, where numerous tourists in high heels and designer gear were taking posed photos of each other whilst we ate lunch. Clearly they were just stopping at roadside viewpoints for their Insta shots.
We then found a short hike to the incredible Mistaya Canyon with waterfalls and eddy pots. The noise was quite something.
A short stop at Howse Pass, we headed on to Sunwapta falls for more crazy powerful water action.
Another stop as Saskatchewan for coffee (appalling) we drove on via the main glacier in the area which they bus tourists onto (literally) – we elected not to take part in this activity due to the environmental damage it must cause. However, we did see a huge bald eagle soaring above.
On the approach to Jasper we began to see the damage the infamous wildfires caused a year ago – incredible to see vast swathes of land mostly devoid of life, with matchsticks poking up from the ground where trees had once stood. We did see some elk at the side of the road in a couple of places.
We arrived at our hotel shortly before we had a booking at Evil Dave’s Grill for dinner – highly recommend this place, food was superb!
