Day
60 – 7-10-15 Friday Today was a one bear and several mountain goats
day.
We
fueled up both vehicles across from the campground and headed for
Jasper B.C. We had planned to stay there at least for one maybe two
nights. It was going to be a short driving day, only about 50 miles
but our plans changed. Just before getting to Jasper we entered the
Jasper National Park and would be turning onto the Icefields Parkway
toward Lake Louise which is in Banff National Park. We had to pay a
park entry fee of $33.20 which would be valid until July 12th
at 4PM. We had noticed a few miles from Mt. Robson that the traffic
coming from the Jasper area was unusually heavy and there was lots of
RVs in the mix. Then we began to notice a blue haze and the smell of
smoke. I asked the lady at the toll booth about the smoke and she
said a forest fire started yesterday in the area. By the time we got
to the entrance to the campground we had planned to stay in about 1 ½
mile from Jasper the smoke was so bad it was beginning to affect
visibility on the road and the smokey smell was much worse. There was
a steady stream of RVs leaving the campground, so we decided we
better move on down the road and hope the fire was in the opposite
direction. It would have been very uncomfortable with all the smoke
in the area. I was looking forward to a personal pan pizza at the
Pizza Hut in Jasper. It has been weeks since we have seen a fast food
restaurant and Jasper has a Pizza Hut and a Kentucky Fried Chicken
place. Oh well.
A
few miles beyond Jasper the traffic was stopped in both directions,
cars were on the road and on the shoulders of the road and people
were getting out of their vehicles and running up the road. We first
though there had been a wreck or maybe someone had hit some wildlife
on the road. After a few minutes a few cars managed to squeeze
through the congestion of cars and people and we could see what was
going on. There was a medium size black bear a few feet off the road
grazing on the vegetation. These “really smart” people were
within a few feet of the bear taking pictures – dumb – dumb -
dumb and against the law in Canada to stop on the road to photograph
wildlife and block traffic. It would have been chaos if the bear had
charged these “really smart” people. We finally got past this
congestion and a few miles up the road there was more cars pulled off
onto the shoulders but not blocking the road. There were several
mountain goats feeding beside the road. They looked ragged because
their Winter coat had not all shed off. It was hanging in clumps on
their bodies. Lena got a couple of photos as we passed them. After
about 2 hours of driving we pulled off at a scenic overlook to take a
break. In a couple of minutes a man knocked on the door of the motor
home. He wanted to know if I had any motor oil that I would sell him.
He said he had an oil leak on his car but he fixed the leak and he
only had one litre of oil to put in it. I checked my extra supplies
and had two quarts of oil that I sold him. He was very thankful
because he was a long way from the nearest town which was Jasper.
We
can understand why this road is called the Icefields Parkway. The
Columbia Icefield is one of the largest masses of glacial ice outside
the Arctic Circle and is surrounded by some of the highest mountains
in the Canadian Rockies (Athabasca, Columbia, Snow Dome).
We
stopped for lunch at the Icefield Centre. They had a large RV parking
lot. There was an impressive view of the mountains and glaciers from
the parking lot of the centre. We fixed some lunch and then walked up
the hill to the centre. There was a sea of humanity everywhere you
looked. The car and the RV parking lots were almost full and the huge
building was jammed packed inside.
About
4 miles back up the road where we just came from they have a clear
glass platform where you can walk out on and look down below. You are
not allowed to park there. You have to go to the Icefileds Centre,
buy a ticket and they take you there on a bus. They had several buses
running back and forth (making lots of money). We had no desire to
walk out over the side of a cliff on a glass platform, much less have
to deal with standing in line for a long time to get tickets and then
get on a bus to ride back up the road. No Thanks.
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| Glass platform viewing over cliff |
We
finally got to the information desk to ask about campgrounds in the
Lake Louise area. It didn't sound too promising that we would get a
site for tonight but decided to try anyway. We could have stayed in
the parking lot at the centre but it was only about 12:30PM and the
motor home and toad was not sitting straight in the parking slot
because a person with a rental RV had not pulled all the way into his
parking spot. He could have pulled up another 8 feet into his parking
spot but didn't and left the rear of his class C motor home sticking
out into the driveway. Therefore I could not make the turn straight
into the only slot remaining that was long enough for us. So we
departed and headed for Lake Louise. There were a few park
campgrounds along the way but they were for tents or short RVs.
The
road before and after the centre were rather rough almost as bad as
the first part of the Cassier Highway. The pavement was cracked
really bad and that made the ride rough. But the scenery was
impressive. Some rugged country. We got behind a truck pulling a
travel trailer that was chugging along about 10 mph below the speed
limit and would not speed up. Places to pass were limited due to the
hills and curves. The traffic was backing up behind us for a long
ways. The people behind us probably though we were the slow pokes but
I would have been running faster if I could have. I don't like to
follow someone like that in the hills because I use the downhill run
to get my speed up to go up the hill on the other side. I pulled off
on a turn off to let all the traffic behind us go and so they
wouldn't think we were the hold up. We caught up with the guy again
in a few miles because all the other vehicles had managed to pass him
one at a time. We were finally able to pass him. There were plenty of
pull offs he could have used to let the traffic by but I guess he was
in his “own little world”. We also notice he didn't have the
proper mirrors on his truck to be able to see back pass the sides of
the travel trailer. Not a safe thing.
About
20 miles from Lake Louise the construction crews were paving the road
and both sides were new fresh smooth pavement. So I guess they are
putting some of the money they are collecting to ride the road to
good use.
We
pulled into the campground at Lake Louise and it was FULL. The clerk
told me there was an Overflow area just 3 miles out of town so we
turned around and went to check it out since it was on the same road
we planned to take anyway. It was a large paved parking lot marked
off for parking long RVs in. There were already several RVs there so
we decided to stay the night. I had been driving over 6 hours up and
down hills and around curves on less than good road and it was time
to stop for the night. We had to pay $10.20 (Canadian) about $9 US,
but we saw no need to push on since we were already tired and it
would have been awhile before there was another campground and we
were not sure about any road side pull offs might be available for
overnight stops. The Milepost book we have been using for most road
information does not cover the highway we would be traveling.
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| 10PM Sunset view from out parking lot "RV Resort" - Contruction workers RVs in background |
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