Magpies, mule deer and bald eagles. No moose in spite of all the ‘moose crossing’ signs everywhere. The last time I was in Jasper I saw a mother moose and her calf standing at the side of the entrance to the campground we were staying at. Just standing there, doing nothing, and looking so tall. We stupidly walked up to them to take pictures (which I still have) but we were lucky we weren’t trampled to death. Just because the mother looked like Bullwinkle it didn’t mean she wouldn’t kick our butts for getting too close. I’ve learned to respect the personal space of wild animals. Still, I was hoping the kids would get to share the same experience I did, but from a distance.
We’d stayed overnight in Jasper so we were able to leave pretty early after a great breakfast at George’s, a restaurant right next door to the hotel. Eggs, toast, tomatoes instead of bacon (I’m not sure it was a fair trade-off in terms of cost – two extra tomato slices for the missing bacon but hey, who can complain about $6.95 for breakfast while staring at mountains on a beautiful sunny day?) Jaybird loved her oatmeal and Bugaboo just loved being on a road trip.
The mountains had already started last night but there’s nothing quite like the spectacle you see when driving between Jasper and Banff, to me the epicentre of the Canadian Rockies and the most beautiful drive in Canada. Every twist and turn showed a panorama more breathtaking than the last. We kept pulling over onto the rest stops to take pictures, saying ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaaahhhh’ and hoping the kids would remember this. Dad was in so many photos that I had to remind myself to take the youngest child OUT OF THE CAR so we could get her into a picture too. Now when she grows up she’ll believe us when we tell her she was actually present on Granddad’s road trip.
Lunch at the Trailhead Cafe at Lake Louise was great – fresh veggie chili, baked macaroni and cheese, veggie-cheddar sandwich on whole wheat were all home made. While lunch was a success, there were two disappointments today. One was the most obvious, that although Dad was with us spiritually, he couldn’t tell us that he was also enjoying the mountains as objects of beauty and wonder, and not obstacles to avoid when driving. Or he’d say something not fit to print, which is most likely.
The other disappointment was that the rivers and streams of raging glacier water were missing. The riverbeds were just mud, as though that pale green mountain water that I remember left to go somewhere else. Not sure why that was, unless it’s too early in the season for the caps to melt enough to fill up the river beds. I remember washing dishes (without soap, of course) in the mountain river water when we camped here and I was disappointed we didn’t get the opportunity to dip our toes into the same frigid water. While there were some rivers and streams they seemed to be very shallow and barely flowing. My first trip was further into the summer so who knows, maybe it’s just bad timing, or global warming.
Another difference was the new fencing that runs along the highway to keep the animals off the road. Instead they’re to use the designated ‘animal bridges’ that span the highway. They’re not like people bridges but rather more natural looking paths with pine needles and shrub floors, but in the shape of bridges. The paths appear to be uneven so thankfully they’re also fenced. Why would you fence the animals off the highway but then let them fall off the unfenced bridges that you hope they use because they’re suppose to be safer? What would animals do without the ingenuity and common sense of humans? How on earth did they survive before we came along? Sheesh.
We didn’t see any animals crossing their bridges but then that was probably just as well. Who knows how pissed they might be for fencing off their space? You never know what they might get up to, like throwing snowballs or worse yet, eggs, at passing cars. Maybe I don’t need to see those nasty moose after all.
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