Tags
fun, jasper, Jasper National Park, maligne canyon, mountains, photography, road trips, travel, water fall
Sunday morning we left Edmonton and headed for Jasper. I was looking forward, especially, to seeing the Maligne Canyon again.
It was a beautiful sunny day. Our hearts were light, we were excited about soon being in the mountains. Jasper was only 360 km away. We came to the top of a hill and Susan exclaimed -“Look, in the distance, mountains!” Now I was driving at 110 km so could only sneak-a-peek (or peak). It did look like mountains. But as we got closer we realized what we were seeing was a cloud bank on the horizon. This was the big snow storm we had seen forecast. We kept hoping that we would get to Jasper before we reached the clouds. But soon our sunny day said “So long, suckers” and the sun took off behind a massive layer of clouds and the snow started falling.
When we entered the mountain region there were none, mountains that is. Well, they were there, but not visible to us. We could see the bases of what we knew to be grand, magnificent, awe-inspiring peaks rising into the sky – dwarfing everything else and which would have filled our hearts with joy and gladdened our souls. But not today! We went into the town of Jasper, parked and headed over to the Park office to buy our passes. In the same picturesque building is “Friends of Jasper”, a non-profit store where the profits all go toward the maintenance of the national park.
It’s a lovely place to browse and you feel better buying neat stuff when you know the park will benefit. The staff is very friendly and helpful. They certainly helped relieve us of some money that must have been weighing us down. It’s always good to get the gift buying done early on in the trip. Or so I was told.
Later, we drove out to the Maligne Canyon, the park staff had closed the road from the canyon to Maligne Lake, because of heavy snow accumulations and icy conditions. We turned into the canyon road, parked and went total a look. It had been a long time since we had seen this remarkable wonder, created by years of rock erosion from the rushing Maligne river as it ground its way down from the lake to the lower valley,
Because of the clouds and snow, everything was white and shades of grey. Not sure whether there were fifty or not, but certainly plenty for me. But the wonderful thing about grey days is the vibrancy of colours in the rocks, flora and water. Dull days are often the best for photography.
If we had arrived on a sunny day we would probably have missed the richness of the colours. It was treacherous under foot, so we didn’t linger long that first day. In fact we retreated to the teahouse. We collected some tea (self-service) and were hoping the man behind the counter would help us to some scones in the display case. But he just kept taking pastries and wrapping them up. He finally noticed us and asked what we were waiting for. I pointed to the scones, and said “some of these”. He looked sadly at me and said “It’s self-service, lift up the cover and help yourselves”. Well that was embarrassing. It got worse. It turned out they were closing in one minute ( just after we had settled at a table and were obviously going to enjoy our tea and scones at our leisure). Eventually we go the hint, realized they were closed. They were waiting for the poor old dears (kinder than they were thinking) to help each other up and leave. As we left we noticed the sign on the door – closing at 4pm. Ha, not today they weren’t.
And so began the mountain part of our adventure. Stick around the weather changes…