road trip 2022 - day 12 - to Revelstoke, then back home

 This is the second last day of the road trip. Tomorrow I leave Revelstoke for Vancouver.

Today I drove the Icefields Parkway, which is Highway 93 between Jasper and Banff. This is an incredibly beautiful drive with amazing views of mountains and glaciers the whole way. 

Before long I reached the Columbia Icefields. This is a famous tourist attraction. At the Icefield Center you can book tours that take you in vehicles onto the glacier. Quite expensive, though. There are a few tongues of the big icefield extending down valleys between the neighbouring mountains, but there is a very large one that extends farther down which is the most noticeable from the road, and this is the main attraction.

Around 1900 the glacier reached all the way to the highway, and has been receding since. It receding more rapidly, recently, about 5m per year. The receding glacier leaves a vast area of moraine in its wake. Also during the ice age the glacier carved this huge flat valley through with the road runs. Overall it's a very eerie landscape.

I drove down to a parking area from which you can walk a bit through the moraine get a closer view.

There are signs marking the extent of the glacier in different years. I was here in about 1977. Kind of weird to think that the spot where I'm standing now was covered in meters of ice at that time.

I continued down the Icefield Parkway, almost overwhelmed with the majesty of the mountains at every turn. Really, with such an array of high, rugged mountains so close on either side, I felt like I was in some kind of land of the giants. At the Saskatchewan River crossing the road drops steeply to a valley, offering more fantastic views.

I stopped at Mistaya Falls, a powerful waterfall where a river enters the Mistaya Canyon and carves very interesting rock formations. 

While beautiful, the highway was single lane and winding so there was no passing, so the traffic went very slowly. When I reached the Number 1 highway I turned west and made it to Revelstoke in good time. While in Revelstoke I stopped in a Rumpus Brewing for a beer and something to eat.

This is the last entry for the road trip. Tomorrow is a fairly long drive back to Vancouver.

road trip 2022 - day 11 Jasper

Finally, a sunny day! It made such a difference driving west towards Jasper, and having morning sun on the wall of mountains looming before me. 

After coffee in Jasper, my first stop was Mt. Edith Cavell. To get there you take the secondary Highway 93a just south of Jasper, and then turn onto a long, steep winding road. When you reach in the parking lot, you are in the alpine, and a short walk through glacial moraine takes you to a view of the mountain. There are other trails that I wanted to explore. Some were closed, but there was a climber's route that takes you up some steep snow fields and loose rock, and I climbed that way for a while to get some different views.

Hanging off the side of the mountain is the Cavell glacier, and below it there is a turquoise lake with glacial meltwater and chunks of ice.

I started a sketch of the glacier, that I finished later in the day.

I continued south down Highway 93a, which runs parallel to the main Highway 93, until Athabasca Falls. It is a narrow, single lane highway with no shoulder, and is fairly quiet. As I came around a bend in the road, I saw a black bear just starting to cross the highway. Fortunately, I guess bears are smarter than deer, since when he saw me he stepped back, waited for me to pass, then continued crossing. Whew!

The next stop was Athabasca Falls, where all the water of the Athabasca river funnels into a narrow canyon creating a very powerful waterfall.

From there I went back northward toward Jasper, up the main Highway 93, to the Valley of the Five Lakes hiking trail. This valley has a lush environment with different types of trees, so completely different from the alpine I saw earlier today. The hike is a loop that takes you to each of the lakes, with beautiful views of the lakes and the surrounding mountains. 

Finally, I went into Jasper, and had a beer at Jasper Brewing while I worked on my drawing. 

road trip 2022 - day 10 Jasper

I had booked a boat tour of Maligne Lake for today. This is a long, glacier-fed lake at a high altitude, with steep mountains on either side. All along the tour there are spectacular views of the mountains, glaciers, and the beautiful turquoise water of the lake.

Along the way, a guide gave a talk on the history of the lake and answered questions. The tours have been operating since around the 1930's, at which time the lake was also stocked with fish. In addition to the tour boats, there were quite a few people in small boats fishing, or canoeing or kayaking.

After the boat tour, I had planned to do a moderate hike in the area. However, it was rainy, and when I asked about the trail I was told it was still covered in snow at the top and very muddy. In fact, because of the late start to the summer this year, a lot of the higher elevation trails in Jasper Park are still closed. So instead of doing a large hike, I ended up spending my time in Jasper doing several smaller ones. The advantage is that I got to see more areas of the park.

After the boat tour I went to Miette hot springs. It's a few kilometers off the main highway, near the park boundary. When I got there, I first did a little hiking in the area. There is a short walk that goes to the ruins of the former facility, closed in 1984, and it continues to the source of the hot spring.  You can feel the sulphur-smelling hot water coming out of the ground. From there, I continued on, hiking for an hour or so in the surrounding hills. When I was done walking I came back to the main hot spring facility for a soak in the pool.

On the way back to Hinton, east of Jasper where I was staying, I stopped at Folding Mountain brewery, about 15 km west of Hinton. It is a real craft brewery and restaurant. I tried their pale ale and it was quite good. The funny thing about the place is that, except for a few cabins nearby, it seems to be in the middle of nowhere. It was busy though, so people are coming from somewhere.

road trip 2022 - day 9 to Jasper

 I'll actually be staying in Hinton, a town about 75km east of Jasper. So while I'm here I'll have to drive in to the park every day to do some hiking. (At the time that I looked for accommodation, the town of Jasper was completely booked.)

Today, I left Edmonton early, and since was before noon by the time I reached Hinton, it was too early to check in so I continued on to Jasper to see what I could do today. I stopped at Maligne Canyon, just before the town of Jasper. The canyon is very narrow and deep with fast moving water carving out interesting limestone formations. Quite a sight.

It was very busy - the parking lot was full - so there were a lot of people walking along the path by the canyon. It's about a 2 km path along the canyon. Then, there is a quieter path that continues through the trees for another 2 km to a bridge further down the river. 

It was raining off and on today but fortunately not while I was walking. Afterwards I went into Jasper to stop at the Tourist Information Center, and get some information about day hikes. By then it was about 4 pm so I headed back to Hinton to check in. On the way, it was quite cloudy so there wasn't much of a view of the mountains. However on the side of the road there was this magnificent stag just grazing, not fazed at all by all the people stopping to take pictures.

road trip 2022 - day 7 and 8 - study and JLPT

For these couple of days I was focused on the test. I spent Saturday mostly studying from a JLPT practice book. I studied at a coffee shop on Whyte Avenue for a while. The street was much quieter after the Canada Day celebrations finished. Also kind of rainy that day. 

In the afternoon I walked from my hotel to the JLPT test site at the University of Alberta to make sure I knew the way. U of A has a beautiful campus - red brick buildings surrounding an open green quad. 

Sunday was test day. I got up quite early, and it was sunny and warm for the walk to campus. When I got to the building, there were a lot of people, several hundred I'd say, waiting to register. Different levels were held in different rooms. I chatted briefly with a couple of young guys waiting to enter the classroom for our level - they'd come from as far as Ontario and New York. 

The test itself has parts for vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening, and you have to achieve a least a certain score on each part to pass. I'm sure I did well on everything except the listening part - always my weakness. I have to wait until September for the result.

Afterwards I did laundry and went to the craft beer place again. Taking it easy for the rest of the day.

Back at the hotel, the bar was having an open mic night. Nice folk music and a great way to unwind.

road trip 2022 - day 5 and 6 to Edmonton

 I left Barkerville in the morning, saying goodbye to the lovely hosts at the hotel. I was thinking that I hadn't done any drawing yet on this trip, but on the way out I caught a view of the church worth trying. I sat down on the step of a building across the way, and started the pencil sketch. However, I had to finish the initial sketch quite quickly and get up and leave, as I was being eaten alive by mosquitos. I finished with the ink and the watercolour pencil later in the day.

The weather was nice. I stopped in Quesnel for a coffee, and a walk along the river for a bit, before continuing to Prince George. It was a short drive today, and I arrived early. I used the time to stock up on groceries. I then found a craft beer place downtown, Crossroads Brewing, and had a beer while I finished my drawing. 

I had spent a summer here in Prince George as an undergrad, but that was almost 40 years ago, so not surprisingly I really didn't recognize anything.

The next day I got up early for a very long day of driving. The first couple of hours of Highway 16 east of Prince George is a long stretch of nothing but rolling hills and forest, with after a while mountains rising up on either side. Kind of eerie, really. This is a long, flat valley of the Fraser River - almost hard to believe it's that same river that empties in Vancouver. I then reached the very friendly little town of McBride, which was founded as a stop for the railway. There is still a train station, and the tourist information center is in the same building.

Continuing east, the mountains rise higher and soon you arrive at Mt. Robson Park. As the lady in the McBride tourist information center said when I asked about seeing Mt. Robson from the road: "you can't miss it". Incredible view.

I stopped at the Mt. Robson Visitor Center and walked around for a bit.

Back on the road and soon crossed the border into Alberta and Jasper National Park. I had planned to stop at the information center in Jasper, but being Canada Day the town was packed with people, so I just drove straight through. The scenery of the Rocky Mountains in Jasper National Park is amazing. I will spend some time here after Edmonton, so I'll talk more about it then. In the meantime, a drive through a National Park like Banff or Jasper is not complete without traffic having to stop for wildlife.

From Jasper it is still another three hours or so to Edmonton, making it a very long day. Almost 9 hours on the road including stops. I eventually made it to my hotel on Whyte Ave, which a busy area with restaurants and bars. Things were in full swing with Canada Day celebrations. Despite the long day, I didn't feel like going to bed early. I found a craft beer place, Situation Brewing, and had a beer and read for a bit before calling it a night.