More More Canada

We arrived at Jasper and set up camp in the rapidly descending dusk. A key feature of the trek was that our entire group was very laid back and we were never in a hurry to get anywhere and hence took great pleasure in just enjoying the journey and stopping to see anything of interest along the way. The flip side of this is that we often set up camp quite late in the day, but we coped!

We had another evening around the campfire and after a long day went to bed relatively early. We were then woken rather early by Elk barking in the woods around the camp. In the end we got up early and enjoyed another beautiful Canada dawn...




As everyone gradually emerged (some had had a rather later night...!) we set to breakfast and then headed off into Jasper.



Breakfast!


Our group decided to go for a hike at mt Edith Cavell in the morning, with the plan to come back to Jasper early afternoon to go to the swimming pool! The hike was again great and we got the sense of being really quite remote, despite the other people around. We walked up to the lake which had the galcier carving into it - we heard the roar of bits breaking off and falling into the water whilst we were walking.



View down the valley from near the top

After some lunch at the top with a view of the "Angel Glacier", which is perched precariously on the side of a mountain, we headed back down and returned to Jasper.



Lunch and Angel Glacier


On an iceberg in the lake.


Chris tests the water and finds it a little cold for his liking!

In Jasper we all took great delight in going to the swimming pool complex, which was complete with water slide, inflatables, water polo nets steam room and large jacuzzi! The group of us spent about 2 hours in there exploring all the activities and thoroughly relaxing. It was great!

After, we took a walk back along the main (and really the only!) street to the local brewery pub, where we sampled a selection of the local wares...! We then wandered back along the street to the pizza & pool bar, where we ate pizza, drank beer and played free pool whilst doing so. Then we decamped to a local bar/club where we hustled some more pool and some of us (me not included!) graced the dance floor.

The next morning we packed up and headed across to Clearwater and the Lake on which we would spend the next two day and a half. The roads looked largely like this...




To be continued...