Jasper to Calgary - 5 October 2023

 

Waterfowl Lake

We had a 400 kilometre drive to Calgary via the Icefields Parkway.  This road goes through a series of valleys between two ranges of the Rockies.  It is spectacular.  Occasionally it felt like being in the southern alps except these are bigger mountains with several of them being higher than Aoraki Mt Cook in New Zealand. 

 

Our first stop was the Athabasca Falls which were interesting and apparently can be quite spectacular during the spring when the spring melt is well underway. 


Athabasca Falls

 

The road continued climbing until we came to the Columbia icefields which consists of several glaciers including the Athabasca Glacier which is visible from the road and a visitor centre.  There are also tours that can be taken onto the glacier, but  being a bit stretched for time we couldn’t avail ourselves of that experience. 

Upper Athabasca River

 

When I was here last time it seemed that the glacier was closer to the centre, however my memory may be faulty.  That time, it was very cold and there was icy snow blowing around which I recall stinging my face.  It was also threatening to snow. 

Athabasca Glacier
 

We continued on climbing up over a pass to the other side where there was a very quick descent down to the valley floor.  We followed the Saskatchewan River for the next hundred or so kilometres to Lake Louise passing several very pretty glacial lakes.  We stopped at one called a Waterfowl lake where there was a guy swimming in very very cold water as if it was the tropics.  He provided an additional interest alongside the beautiful scenery.

 

We were planning to go to Moraine Lake but the only way to get there was to take a shuttle.  As we had arrived mid-afternoon and we still had to get to Calgary we decided we would instead take the second best tourist site, Lake Louise.  After a bite to eat we drove up to Lake Louise.  For me it was quite a contrast to a previous visit.  This time there were hordes of visitors and the sun was shining.  It is a place of sublime beauty and was a very early tourist destination where initially Canadian Pacific Railway built a lodge for their wealthy train travellers which burnt down.  The next building was more substantial and it formed the first part of the existing Chateau. 

 

Lake Louise

Chateau Lake Louise

Despite only being at the lake for about an hour we paid some of the most expensive parking ever.  If we had been there for a day it would have been more reasonable. 

 

We drove around Banff township which has similarities to Queenstown without a lake in the foreground. 

 

We then burst out of the Rockies on to the main route to Calgary which was about hour away on a very good road.  It was like leaving the Southern Alps going from green trees to a rolling arid landscape with virtually no trees in sight. 

 

The GPS competently navigated us to our hotel near the airport where we checked into our accommodation and then filled it with fuel at $1.50 a litre and returned it to the rental car company at the airport. 

 

This apart from the night at the hotel ended the first part of holiday. 




All the above views at the Athabasca Falls

A pass through the Rockies

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An extra-long train journey – 14 October 2023

Image
  I woke to the news that the government in New Zealand was going to change to a far more conservative one.   A disappointment for me but not surprising. Even the scale of the defeat was as expected.      Perhaps there would be a better result from the All Blacks versus Ireland Rugby World Cup match.   Due to our travel that day, the outcome was to be left unknown until later that day when hopefully we could watch it at Joly's.     Union Station, Toronto We had had a couple of messages the day before saying that there may be delays with our train journey to Toronto, caused by trackwork.   Something we are very familiar with in Wellington and Auckland.     Our departure was 10:30 but when we got to the train station we were informed that it would be an hour and a quarter late.   So no rugby match to watch at 3pm, given the estimated time of arrival.   The train was joined to another train leaving a...
Read more

Riding the line and gawking at planes – 13 October 2023

Image
  Riding the line   Ottawa has, amongst other museums, the National Aviation and Space Museum.   I had been to it many years ago but figured it must have some new exhibits.   Graham kindly transported me there.   I had a wonderful two and a half hours looking at the various aircraft.   One had even been reconstructed by Peter Jackson’s firm.   It was nice to see that New Zealand had a little bit to do with the exhibits.   The aircraft were all planes that had been part of Canada’s aviation history.   Like New Zealand, the government of Canada has been a small spender on the military. Thus, any military aircraft have to last a long time.   Dragon Moth - descendent of the Tiger Moth   In the afternoon we went for a bike ride.   It is the first one I have done for a while.   The route took us mostly on a disused rail corridor, so it was very flat and very straight.   Canada is relatively flat especi...
Read more

Testing Toronto's public transport system – 16 October 2023

Image
Early 1900s houses or even earlier I had volunteered to cook on Monday night for Joly and Lisa, who was coming around for dinner that night.   I found a recipe and all we had to do was get some supplies in for the meal.   Joly was working from home as builders were there to do some maintenance on his house.     Paul, Yvette, Lisa and Joly had said we ought to go to the Kensington Market and do the west side of Queen Street.   Apparently, it was quite a funky area and   a bit like Cuba Street in New Zealand.   With Joly’s help we figured out how to use the public transport.   I like using public transport because you get to see other parts of the city.   And sometimes it is a reasonably quick way to get between points A and B.   They have a subway system and we all needed to do was find the station and take the westbound line to Spadina.   However, we decided to check out the local supermarket first to ens...
Read more