Jasper

Sunday, September 04, 2022

Jasper, Alberta, Canada

Jasper

Jasper - wildfire - seeing the fire

We check out the wild fire in Jasper NP

Driving west on Highway 16 towards Jasper NP and yes as soon as we reach the gate we have to pay!!! At least Paul gets a Dollar of for being a senior…. And the lady there told us, that all campgrounds are full – but that we can always can drive back out here…. Let’s hope we find something (as per Paul you can always park along the streets).

As we drive along the Athabasca River and Jasper Lake (which by the way is not a lake) we can then see the mountain and the smoke – and as many others we stop (ok we stopped at least 3 times) to watch the smoke: it is super windy going north: which is a good thing, so the smoke is not blowing into Jasper: we could see depending on the flare up the flames and the helicopters flying over. I thought it was super interesting to watch.

Where can we camp tonight???

Otherwise Gine was a bit concerned on where we can camp – I mean it is September long weekend correct. First, we went to the Whistler Campground: all is full but she said the overflow in Wapiti still has spots – so we went right away there and she does has spots with electric hookup!!! Actually when you think about it we save here 11 Dollars for not having a picnic table. Perfect. We check out our spot have a coffee and then explore.

Jasper - at Lake Annette

Clouds at Lake Annette & Lake Edith

Gine said we go to Lake Edith to be on the beach in this beautiful sunshine – as we drive in, we had to stop: guess what you need to check in and they make sure that there is parking available!!!! Haha the clouds are coming, and everyone leaves – so we can go in. we found a parking spot at Lake Edith – with the clouds the lake didn’t look as nice as it should be and the “beach” area is teeny tiny – we walk over to Lake Annette, here there is lots of open space so we decided to set up here – but it is definitely no beach day today – bummer. We even need the sweaters as the wind is fairly cool

Gine walked partly around the lake as where Paul enjoyed the scenery from the beach area.

Did you know that Lake Annette is a spring fed lake and most of the water enters the lake through an underground river connection to Medicine lake (which is 20 km away)
And the color in the lakes (which look nicer when the sun shines) comes from the rock flour
This is also a pothole or kettle lake: when the ice melted after the last ice age 12.000 years ago some big chunks of ice were left behind and they made depressions in the ground: the pothole or kettle lakes
Also Jasper is the perfect spot to go on a lake as there are 1762 lakes

Parking in Jasper Town

As the weather is not that great, we thought how about a coffee in town? The idea is not bad, but there is no free parking in Jasper – you have to pay everywhere and that we didn’t want to do– so we drove through the town – ok once you are far enough outside, there is parking so you can “hike” to town which we thought is stupid and decided it will be way nicer to have coffee near the river…

Jasper- Athabasca River - enjoying the sunshine

Sunshine along the Athabasca River

We went to the Athabasca River found a parking – perfect!!! And a super nice bench on the river in the sunshine!!! No, we didn’t leave the lake to early because when we look behind us, then there are dark clouds… with the coffee in the sunshine we are both happy: Paul enjoying the sunshine and the view – and Gine walking along the river and checking it out. As well we could watch the Rafting boats coming in you know there are the we come in with dry clothes and the ones we are wet ones… guess which would be my favorite?

Jasper - in the overflow camping

Power outage on our Electric overflow camping

We head back to our campsite and plugged in our electricity – perfect everything gets charged, after supper we discover we have no power and wondered if it is our plug – but no there is a power outage. We thought maybe we can have showers – but see there the showers need electricity (it is all to modern as the shower starts with touch) – but the electricity comes back and we have nice hot showers… And with the dark clouds coming we have a relaxing evening inside… and tomorrow nearly everyone goes home – let’s hope!!!

And when we got up in the morning there was no electricity!!! A town without power.

We were also thinking should we stay or should we go??? It is fairly cloudy – so we decided to leave Jasper and head south again.