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Jasper or Bust

Radium is NOT a big town. But, SURPRISE, it DOES have a free 54 MbpsWiFi network for residents, businesses and visitors!

I used the network to catch up on email (mainly deleting stuff so my account doesn’t get locked up) and post my blog for the previous few days. Denise caught some Z’s and did her Soduko in the back.

Then we walked around town. Took all of about 10 minutes (for both sides of the road).

So we repaired back up the road to the Hot Springs and went for another swim. When we had had enough we went back to town and ordered a pizza, having ‘happy hour’ in the van while we waited the 20 minutes for the pizza to be ready. Then we headed for the campsite.

Ate pizza instead of ‘chunky’ for a change. Watched ‘For a Few Dollars More’ and retired for the night.

Tuesday 18 Sept 2007

Drove up toward Golden (outside the National Park) and then angled back into the Park heading for Jasper.

As far as Denise is concerned, the stretch of approx 250 miles from Banff to Jasper is the most spectacular contiguous scenery we have encountered. Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Teton are all spectacular in their own right, but they have a limited local ‘range’. The Banff/Jasper Park just goes on for miles and miles, with these humungous peaks bordering a vast range of valley substrates and rivers ranging from small creeks to major maelstroms.

There is a dearth of wildlife on the road, despite frequent signs warning us of ‘Elk Crossing next 20 Km’. I think they have taken a leaf out of their human counterparts books and gone on strike for better benefits or something? I keep on saying ‘Here Elky, Here Elky’, but it doesn’t seem to help?

But, there are plenty of glaciers to see on this leg. One around every corner! But they are all ‘receding’ due to global warming (Crowfoot Glacier, which apparently had 3 ‘toes’, hence the name, now only has 1-1/2 toes!), so if you ain’t see ‘em yet, better get up here soon!

And Denise has been adding to her ‘rock collection’. By the time we get home there should be a few bucketfuls (or is that buckets full?). I’ll have to do a trip up here with the excavator and the trailer!

As we come into Jasper, we decide to book in at the campsite first, and, as we turn into the road leading to the campsite, there are a bunch of elk, a few does and a big stag! I got a few pics, and we head on into the camp to locate our spot, then drive out again and go visit Annette Lake and the Jasper Park Lodge (where we see more elk), then Jasper ‘town’. Not much bigger than Radium, but plenty of ‘tourist shops’, all expensive!

We go to the supermarket for some fresh supplies, and head back to the camp for a supper of re-heated pizza and Chunky Chicken & Sausage Gumbo! On the way we see another bunch of elk on the roadside.

Wednesday 19 Sept 2007

We consider going further North to Miette (supposedly the ‘hottest hot springs in the Rockies’), but decide that the extra mileage is not justifiable, so we get on the road ‘out’, heading for Tete Jaune Cache (the junction with Hwy 16 South to Kamloops).

Adjacent to Mt. Robson we stop at the ‘Robson Café’ for gas for the van and coffee & muffins for us. Quite a great view of the mountain itself from the table.

We get going on the road Southwards. About 2/3rds of the way to Kamloops, just before Clearwater, I see a ‘small dark moving dot’ on the range on the driver’s side of the van, which rapidly grows into a ‘large moving dark dot’ as we get closer, and we realise it is actually a BEAR, loping cross country between the highway and the river.

While it is quite clearly a bear, and quite a large one at that, it is still along way away, so we stop and get out of the van to get a good look from the roadside. Denise grabs the binoculars for a ‘close up’, and I take pics with the camera as the bear heads closer to where we are, angling toward a clump of trees e few hundred yards ahead of the van.

Our BIG MISTAKE was to get out of the van. If we had just stayed inside, the hordes of other onlookers that arrived would have probably have unknowingly passed us by at 120 Kph and we would have had the bear sighting to ourselves! With them seeing us on the roadside with binocs, we soon had 2 tour busses, various and sundry RV’s, cars and motorcycles stopped all over the place!

The bear, seeing and hearing all the activity, stopped moving our way, stood ‘on guard’ for a while, and eventually ran off directly away from us (when the motorcyclists started their engines, revving up of course for the sake of the attending crowds).

I think it was probably a ‘Black Bear’, despite it having a brown coat, but it was BIG, definitely bigger than a cow when on all fours, so it could possibly have been a Grizzly?

After that excitement, the rest of the trip to Kamloops was uneventful, other than stopping to buy fruit. When we get to Merritt, we pull in for gas, and go to the Walmart for some supplies. Walmart seems to have adopted a strategy of buying a farm on the outside edge of town, paving a huge lot, building their shop and waiting for the crowds to arrive, which they do!

On the other side of Merritt we get on the Coquihalla Highway and rip down South very rapidly, despite numerous ‘roadworks’ activities, arriving in Hope just before 17H00. Not bad considering we left from Jasper this morning?

We check into the riverside campsite in Hope, have our standard fare and take a walk around town, then retire to bed.

Thursday 20 Sept 2007

We look around Hope a little, then drive to Harrison Hot Springs, then drive on towards Vancouver.