With the girls in college and busy with summer jobs at home for the summer, Kim and I had a first-ever opportunity to vacation after Labor Day since the girls could take care of the corgis while we were away. For most of this trip, we explored two of Alberta’s beautiful national parks, Jasper National Park and Banff National Park. In Jasper, we tented it at Wapiti Campground just a couple miles from Jasper and tried out our new, smaller tent from REI, and in Banff, we rendezvoused with my younger brother Ross and his wife Gale for a two-night stay at a nice resort above the town. We left Banff together and drove to Ross and Gale’s place in Red Deer, Alberta where our parents have been staying for a couple months in their RV. After the stopover, Kim and I headed south and back into the US to camp for two nights at Apgar in Glacier National Park.
Highlights in Jasper included a hike up Sulpher Mountain (starting from Miette Hot Springs) where we watched a large black bear from the hot springs before hitting the trail. The view from the summit was extraordinary, with a 360-degree view which went for fifty to a hundred miles in one direction. And at the end of the hike, we encountered a modest herd of big horn sheep cutting through the parking lot!
On the way to Banff, we took a detour to explore Lake Louise, a beautiful glacier blue-green lake with a backdrop of high mountains and a glacier covering the rocky ridgline between peaks high above the far end of the lake. And when we got to our resort, Ross and Gale greeted us with a home barbequed steak dinner!
In Glacier National Park, we hiked up and down from Logan Pass into Hidden Lake with a solitary picnic along the shoreline. When we returned to our car 500 meters down the road from the previously full parking lot at Logan Pass, we walked out on the windswept view platform where you can see many miles of the Going-to-the-Sun highway descending and winding westward, and below us and 500 meters away, we observed a large grizzly bear foraging for berries and treetops. A perfect ending to our wildlife viewing on this trip.
