Jasper (7/17/2005)

We spent our third week in Canada in Jasper, Alberta. While in Jasper we stayed in Whistler Campground. This is a very nice national campground. There were a small herd of caribou (a male, several females, and some babies) staying in and around the campground. We saw them several times. One time Rich saw them when he was walking Max. Max so wanted the caribou to chase him, and Rich so did not. The campground also included a field with Canadian prairie dogs. They were fun to watch as they did the warning chirp. You could hear chirps from all over the field as something got too close. Max loved to run among them, of course he never got close. I read on the internet that Max is the most popular name for dogs right now. In Jasper, I believed it, we ran into 3 other Max’s in our section of the campground.
We were only a few minutes from town so we drove in fairly often. They even had a fabric store (so I was able to buy some fabric from Alberta). In addition to visiting the town, we drove to Lake Maligne and took a boat tour of the lake. It is the largest lake in the Canadian Rockies. It is a very beautiful lake. We also walked through Maligne Canyon. There is a nice long trail with 6 bridges. We walked through 5 of the bridges. I could easily imagine that this was how the Grand Canyon began. The 5th bridge was a suspension bridge; pretty but it moved a little too much for my comfort level.
In addition to taking the trips to Lake Maligne, we took the tram above Jasper. We were lucky in that while most of the time we were in Jasper the weather was sort of iffy, the day we took the tram it was pretty nice. It was pretty windy on the way down, but it was very nice for the hike up to the summit after the tram ride. We also drove to back on the Icefields Parkway to Athabasca Falls. It was gorgeous.
In addition to the caribou in the campground (and outskirts of town) we saw mountain goats and Longhorn sheep right alongside the road and as we were leaving town we saw another black bear. We were towing the 5th wheel when we saw the bear so I did not get a picture.