Photos
September 3, 2012 - It is Labour Day in Canada, so it is the same as Labor Day but with a u. We didn't notice anything else special about the holiday except that while crowds everywhere had been crazy since Thursday, we didn't see those kinds of throngs today so it looks like everyone was traveling home after the holiday weekend today.
Clay and I were up and out before sunrise because he had supposedly been up for a while hearing elk bugles. We went out to see if we could catch the sunrise or some wildlife. We didn't get any kind of special sunrise. But, we did see a collared mother elk and her yearling on the island in the Athabasca River from our cliffside view. The yearling was bucking and kicking and jumping and spinning around among some fallen trees out on the island. He was doing a crazy, happy dance to the break of day! Then, we watched him follow his mom across the river and they continued on south down the aptly named,
Wapiti Trail. That was so great!
Then we walked to the road where we saw a woman standing still for a long time. We asked what she was looking at and she thought it was a fox. It turned out it was a coyote. It was following a trail on the other side of the road and heading north. Everyone had somewhere else to be this morning's commute!
Breakfast was at 8am at the hotel restaurant. We had 2 choices, hot or cold. Hot breakfast was 2 eggs cooked to order with bacon and sausage and toast. Cold breakfast was fruit and yogurt. Either breakfast came with orange juice and coffee or tea. We all went with hot. It was good. The bus departed at 9am.
Today our bus ride was to
Maligne Canyon, Gorge and Lake. The only wildlife we saw was a coyote hunting mice on the way into and out of the canyon. We stopped briefly for a photo op at
Medicine Lake, so named for Bad Medicine because of its extreme level fluctuations due to lots of holes in the rock that makes up the lake bed. Then, we drove on around it to Maligne Canyon and the falls through the gorge for a short, 2 bridge guided walk with Amy and a potty/gift shop break. We learned about
chockstones. We learned about
Rose Marie canoe at Maligne Lake. Then we went on to
Maligne Lake where we were free to wander for a while, but we did not have enough time there to take the boat trip to Spirit Island and back.
We got back into Jasper proper and had an orientation bus ride around the main business part of town with places that might interest us for meals or shopping pointed out. The trail from Jasper to our hotel was also pointed out. We were told that cab fare would run about $12. The bus would be going back to the hotel after dropping off anyone who wanted and then would make 2 more round trip runs at 2:30pm and 4pm.
We got off the bus to stay in Jasper for lunch and the afternoon. We all agreed to skip dinner in essence. We walked a long loop around reading menus. We bought a 6-pack of beer for Judy and Clay. We looked in some shops. We ate a big, late lunch at
Jasper Pizza. I, for one, was starving by then. Sadly, they did not start serving wood-oven pizzas until after 4pm, so while we got to see the smoke and smell it before we left town, we had ordinary thick pizzas. They were fine. We had 3 pizzas and Mom had a bison burger. We packed up leftovers and didn't order dessert. Clay walked the beer and leftovers over to the bus for storage at 2:30pm. He closed them in the overhead bin since we knew the smell would drive Brian crazy as he made his Febreeze sweep and cleaning every time everyone left the bus and we were right! The Febreeze smell was a little stronger in our area than normal at 4pm. When we got off the bus, we made Mom carry the pizza box and Brian mouth dropped open and he yelled at her, Pizza!?! Too funny. Brian worked so hard all week to keep that bus so clean inside and out and we really appreciated it, especially the clean windows so we could take pictures out them. Anyway, Clay got an ice cream cone after that. We all walked down to the 2 grocery stores and bought some things to dinner with the leftovers. We bought cheese,
squeaky cheese curds (white cheddar, yum!) and yogurt and I think Clay bought soda. We walked past a couple of gardens, flower and vegetable. Then, Judy sat on a bench and Mom and Clay and I went back to one of the convenience stores that had a big array of frozen Slurpees. The one we wanted was by Tim Hortons because it had soft serve ice cream alone or mixed in a Slurpee and a self service milkshake machine. Mom got a chocolate milkshake and I got a root beer Slurpee with vanilla ice cream. Both were really good! We finished them up on the bench with Judy and then walked over to the train station just before the bus came back at 4pm. He didn't have anyone onboard when he arrived, so I guess none of our 46 planned an evening in Jasper.
We went back to the room and put our food and drinks in the refrigerator. Then, we went out to Wapiti Trail to the cliffside overlook again. I built an inukshuk beside the Athabasca River with supervision from Clay and Judy above. The rocks were weird. First, they were all covered with a silty powder. The rounded ones were really light, like the were made of foam and the angular ones were really heavy. Mom was going to build it with me, but she didn't help because she found some people to talk to. It was more difficult than I thought it would be trying not to fall off the rocks into the water and mud and there were spiders living in the mud under the rocks when I picked them up! I only fell once and I did not hurt myself other than skinning a knuckle. At some point Judy left and went back to her room.
We were hoping to see the elk come back but we didn't see any wildlife. We saw a couple from our group trying to go to the beach below the cliff by walking on the rocks below instead of the upper trail. I knew from building the inukshuk how hard it was to walk down there and was watching because it was a bad idea. She fell down hard and her leg went into a deep hole between 2 big rocks and she hit her head and gouged a hole in her left temple at the hairline. Then she took off her jacket and her shirt, so we stayed up top and moved away. After I checked that she was dressed again, we went back and I hollered down to ask if we could help, I had Kleenex and a bottle of water. They came up and tried to wipe away a lot of blood with my supplies. I thought she needed to go to a hospital and get stitches and a tetanus shot, but I kept that to myself since she looked shaky and scared. Her husband and Mom both had medical kits back in their rooms, so Clay and I stayed behind and left them to tending the injured patient. We went back to the room after we thought we had seen the color of sunset. We set up our picnic dinner on the table in our room. There were 3 chairs in the room and I sat on the bed. The husband came back looking to return Mom's bottle of hydrogen peroxide while we were sitting in the window eating. He said it quit bleeding and they were satisfied it was a clean wound and would be all right, but she was bruised, had a headache and they were worried about her having a black eye. We saw her the next morning and she looked fine. She even had her hair styled to cover the bandage and if you didn't know about it, you probably wouldn't have noticed the slight swelling on that side. I hope she healed well! It was scary.
Clay went back out after dark to look for wildlife again. He came back after I was in my pajamas. He was all excited about a big antlered bull elk across the road. I put on my socks and shoes and pulled a hoodie over the pajamas and we got Mom to put her shoes and jacket on and we all hurried over before it got too dark, or they left. Clay had alerted everyone he could find on his way to the room and there was a pretty good crowd out by the road watching the big guy and his 2 girlfriends grazing. Pretty exciting.
Found random videos from the trip!
Photos
