Oh, Canada....

July 8, 2017 –

Camera shy bull elk near Jasper, AB... thought he was posing
for the photo version of "Whose Butt?"... and yes that
is a real book commonly found in national park gift shops

We haven’t posted to the blog in several days as there has not been much to say.  After leaving Hood River on July 4th, we drove to Flowing Lake County Park in Snohamish, Washington.  Given the traffic conditions and how late it would be before sunset we decided to bag the idea of driving into Seattle for the fireworks.  The display did not even start until 10:20 and we were over an hour from Gas Works Park given traffic around Seattle.  Instead we saw a fairly decent display right in the campground at the Flowing Lake beach area.  Most of the lake front is privately owned and a number of lake houses had spent some serious money on fireworks.  So while it was an ad hoc fireworks display, there were plenty to see and hear.

We had some long driving days to get from Seattle to Jasper, Alberta, Canada.  With very little excitement we made it into the Jasper National Park and our campsite for a couple of days before heading to Banff.

Campground map... We are in loop 26.  Nick can easily
get his running in without leaving the campground.

We were detained a few minutes at the Canadian boarder crossing.  We still aren't sure why, but we had to park the RV and turn over our passports for a "security check".  Before they had us park we had to answer a number of questions about firearms... do we own any (yes), do we have any with us (no), where are they if not with us (in a gun safe at home), do we have concealed carry permits (no)... Maybe it was because we are from the wild west of NM or Nick is from a "Red" state, or we are towing a vehicle with expired Oregon plates and a transit permit, who knows.  Anyway, after a few minutes, we were deemed OK to enter Canada and were on our way.

Pyramid Lake outside of Jasper

We should mention the size of the Whistler campground here in Jasper... it is enormous and FULL!  There are 780 campsites in the campground and very limited facilities.  We made reservations in January to ensure that we had spots in both Jasper and Banff.

Today we were on the bikes and wandered our way over to the town of Jasper.  Without a real route planned out we discovered a pretty extensive network of mountain bike paths. We wound our way to the Jasper visitors center and got a map of the local trails.  A number of them were easy to ride on the tandem and some others weren't which resulted in some "hike-a-bike" activity, but we did get to see a couple of bull elk grazing along a gravel road.  

Beth climbing to Whistlers Peak after the tram ride.  Jasper
is in the background near the river (right) and Pyramid
Lake is the upper lake on the left

We decided to stick to pavement for a while and continued on our way to Pyramid Lake where we saw our first black bear along the way.  The lake was a popular spot for families with shallow water that was warm enough play in.  The single track trail back from the lake was tandem friendly and we enjoyed the ride through the woods.

After lunch back in Jasper we headed to the RV for some down time (serious nap) and then a short drive to the Jasper Tram to go to the top of Whistlers Peak.  After the 3000' tram ride up the mountain, we climbed another mile to the peak.  The views were good, but smoke from fires in British Columbia has filled the valley with a pretty dense smoke which didn't make for very good photos.

The motley crew at Whistlers Peak... Happy Birthday, Beth!  We finally made it to Jasper!