Sunday, October 15th
Thanks for all the birthday wishes for Nico! A few days ago I already gave him his present: a pocket size book, “How to photograph the Canadian Rockies”. A bit late (tomorrow we leave the Rockies), but I think we’ll be back again 😉
Today was a mostly rainy day, but after the fabulous weather we’ve had until today, we can’t complain. We had breakfast at the Mt. Robson Restaurant around the corner and went for some drives today. First we drove west on the 16 until Moose Lake in Mt. Robson Park. There are a lot of beautiful swampy patches in that valley where you can sometimes spot moose (a tip from Edi from the apartment), but of course not when we were driving by 😉 When we got back to Jasper, we turned right onto the Icefields Parkway. There we saw “our” majestic elk bull again!! He walked alongside the road, so we stopped and saw him pass by. I couldn’t stop filming, such an impressive animal! We continued on the Icefields Parkway to drive back to the Athabasca Valley/goatlick viewpoint, but again there were no goats to be found 😛 We turned around and stopped at the Athabasca Falls. Always an impressive site to see the waterfall where all that water gets pushed into a short and small canyon with a lot of force.
Back in Jasper we had a Subway sandwich, did some shopping and spent some time online.
At 6.30pm we drove to the Maligne Valley in the pouring rain. We wanted to drive down the Maligne road at dusk to have more chance to see wildlife. It was getting dark pretty quickly, so we should’ve gone a bit earlier if we would’ve wanted to drive all the way (around 50 km) to Maligne Lake. Now we drove to Medicine Lake and turned there. We “only” saw some white tailed deer (like the ones we saw in Banff).
Nico’s choice for dinner was KFC, so we got some of that chicken on our way back and chilled at the apartment.
Monday, October 16th
We left Jasper just before 9am. In the first 10 or so kilometers we saw a lot of elk! Six times! Sometimes just a bull, sometimes a whole herd. We stopped only once for a bull that was walking on the highway, we filmed and photographed him of course 🙂 The scenery was still mountains for a long time, although it was snowing lightly most of the time and the mountains were in the clouds. After we left Jasper National Park, the scenery slowly changed into foothills and prairie, but it was still fascinating. We stopped in Edson for some Tim Hortons’ coffee and gas for the car. The weather stayed the same, but the road was only wet, so it was OK. We saw a coyote and some deer, but since we drove 110 km/h on the highway, I didn’t manage to get a pic of the coyote, yet again. Damn!
We got to Edmonton around 1.30pm and easily found 156 Street. Just not the right apartment building, so we phoned Kefka for further instructions. Shortly after we got there, we went to the famous West Edmonton Mall (biggest in the world!! – http://www.westedmontonmall.com) with Kefka, Melissa and their little daughter Raine. They showed us all the important places for amusement (water park, ice rink, amusement park incl. roller coaster, sea lion’s show, pirate ship – all indoors!) and shopping (a.o. I finally found a red maple leaf thingie for my necklace and a black Canada sweater) and they bought us dinner (The Old Spaghetti Factory) for Nico’s birthday. Thank you!! We had a lot of fun and esp. Nico and Raine got along perfectly in their gibberish language 😉 Melissa had to work for a few hours (in a clothing store) so we left her there and got back to their home. And when she got home, she even brought those cinnamon buns with her that we had smelled (yummy!) in the mall 🙂 They’re spoiling us!
Tomorrow morning we drive to Saskatoon to visit Brent, Jen and Ella and the next morning Astrid (and then we drive to Regina).