Our Day in Jasper, Sept 17, 2010

First this morning we headed off to see Athabasca Falls, nice bright sunny day for some great photos.

Well, above I say first this morning, it was actually about 11 am when we left, so by the time we left the falls it was lunch time. We stopped at the confluence of the Whirlpool and Athabasca Rivers for lunch.

We then drove up north of Jasper on the same road we ended up on by accident yesterday with the coach to the Maligne Canyon. They call this canyon a slit canyon, now after seeing it, I understand why. Where the water goes is a very narrow slit sometimes perhaps 4-6’wide. We enjoyed seeing and looking down into the canyon while crossing three pedistrian bridges.

Our first bridge.

The view looking down 167 feet from this bridge. A long way down and yes my tummy felt uneasy!

Another bridge, and another view! I understand these falls are used in the winter to do ice climbing.

Our next stop was the Jasper Tramway.

Our view of the village of Jasper from the top 7400’!

Bob, on top of his world!

Here I am doing my best to copy this Inukshuk, by pointing the way to go. The temperature up on top was 28 degrees (-2 C), but with the sun shining was not too cold.

We could see where the coach is parked from on top, we are in the front row, on the end, left side.

Soon it was time to head back down and back to the coach.

Soon Bob noticed a traffic jam out in front of our coach over on the park road. It was an Elk Jam!

The beast in pursuit…

… of this beauty!

We later took the trash out and heard, after dark, the elk bugle, man-o-man what a scary sound, like a person screaming. I found this description of an elk bugle online, “The typical bugle of the bull elk is a surprising, distinctive sound that begins deep and resonant, and becomes a high pitched squeal before ending in a succession of grunts.” I only heard the high pitched squeal!

Also the articles states, “The characteristic rutting call of bulls can be heard from just before dusk to dawn.” It is 10: 30 pm and I just went outside and guess what I heard, the bull elk squeal in the distance. Here is a link to the article about elk bugling.

Tomorrow, we are heading out early (8 am) with the coach to the Columbia Ice Fields, then hope to stay in an RV park at Lake Louise. The next few day are forecasted for rain, so glad we had a beautiful day today.