During the first week of October we took a three-day road trip through Jasper National Park and on to Edmonton, the provincial capital of Alberta. On our first day we drove northward on the Icefields Parkway, a 150 mile route connecting Lake Louise with the town of Jasper. The highway traverses the northern section of Banff National Park and then Jasper National Park, the largest park in the Canadian Rockies. The route goes along the spine of the Rockies and the scenery is spectacularly beautiful at every turn. It is billed as “one of the most beautiful journeys on the planet.” The first part of the route, in Banff National Park, traverses a series of glacier-fed lakes that flow into the Bow River. Glacial flour provides all of these lakes with a beautiful turquoise color. We made stops at Bow Lake and Peyto Lake, which is viewed from an overlook high above the lake. Click on the first photo in each block to view larger images in a slideshow.
We stopped for a picnic lunch on a bluff overlooking the North Saskatchewan River. This river flows out of the Rockies through Edmonton and eventually into Hudson Bay. The Bow River is one of the tributaries to the Saskatchewan River system.
After lunch we passed into Jasper National Park and traveled along the edge of the Columbia Icefield, one of the highlights of the drive. An icefield is an expanse of ice that can feed several glaciers, and the Columbia is the largest icefield in the Canadian Rockies. The Columbia Icefield Centre offers a viewing platform overlooking the Athabasca Glacier, one of the glaciers fed by the Columbia Icefield. The glacier has receded substantially over the past 150 years or so, and there are markers in the ground showing where the edge of the glacier existed during certain past years.
Farther north we took a short hike to Athabasca Falls on the Athabasca River. The waterfall is one of the scenic highlights of the Icefields Parkway drive. The Athabasca River flows northward from Jasper and eventually empties into the Arctic Ocean.
We spent the night in the town of Jasper and then made the four-hour drive to Edmonton the next morning. The drive eastward leaves the mountains rather soon and then traverses prairie land, evidence of Alberta’s role as one of the principal farming and ranching regions in Canada. Our goal in Edmonton was the West Edmonton Mall, one of the world’s largest shopping malls. But to call it a shopping mall is an understatement, as it is more of an entertainment complex. The mall contains a water park, an ice skating rink, an amusement park with a roller coaster, a hotel, and even an entire Toyota dealership including a service department. We especially enjoyed browsing through an extensive Asian grocery store. It is easy to see why folks in Edmonton would enjoy spending time in this enclosed mega-mall during the bitterly cold Alberta winters. We got our dinner that evening from an Indian restaurant in Edmonton that had butter chicken poutine on the menu. We didn’t order it, however. It seemed a little over-the-top.
