Maligne Lodge Jasper

... tour around Jasper, back to Maligne Canyon and Maligne Lake (although I had already been to both, it's always good to go back at a different time of day) and Medicine Lake. We saw lots of deer and elks this morning and also some little creatures called Pica which are a bit like rabbits without the big ears. <br><br> We also saw Bighorn sheep but only the females - it's the males who have the big horns. These ...

... only had they booked a night at lodge halfway along the hike (therefore no tent required), but they had sent their packs in on horseback. What a way to travel!<br><br>Our morning started well enough. We saw a magnificent elk stag on the side of the road with amazing antlers. The energy involved in growing those things every year, only to drop them come winter, is astonishing. A little further up the road we saw a coyote squatting on the road. He trotted along side us for a ...

... Lake. On this outing, we saw a huge male elk grazing along the road. We told him we had someone we'd like him to meet thinking he'd make a great date for our female elk back at the camp site. Too bad he didn't come home with us because that night a whole heard of elk showed up for a trip down to the river. Nothing like a little excitement while camping in the woods.<br><br>Tomorrow we start our trip back south.

... back to Lake Lousie. Kylie's knee had been playing up so she was finding the walk difficult. I did jokingly offer to piggy back her however we both knew that we I would probably slip and fall down the side of the mountain killing us both. Not a good idea for the first week of our holiday (actually not good ever).<br><br>After Lake Louise we continued along the Icefield's parkway driving passed ice caped mountains ...

... on our journey. Ashley, David and I got together and went off to the local Hotel bar for a drink. Ashley, bless him, was like our dad! He worried that we didn't have hats or that David didn't have gloves. Ashley meanwhile was all togged up like he was about to climb Ben Nevis! Admittedly, the snow outside was deep and still falling and your eyelashes turned into stalactites.... Fort Garry Hotel was built in 1913 as luxury accommodation for the train passengers. It is a ...

... have to be fairly self-sufficient). Also, this runs on an honesty box type booking. You arrive, pick a space, fill in the front of an envelope with your details, and then pop your money in, and put it in the box. There's no ranger managing it - this is probably different in summer. So after that, we went straight out, another 60km down the road, to Miette Hot Springs, (the hottest mineral springs in the Canadian Rockies). We'd wanted to do something ...

... its way down the valley, sculpting the landscape! It was only when you stood alongside the lumps of ice that had broke loose that you appreciate the strength of the ice, rock hard, certainly cab able of disintegrating rock! We strolled on the glaciers snout, wary of crevasse's. I spent ages here, fast pacing across the moraines, the amount of meltwater was amazing, the weather warm, even at this altitude, it certainly seemed as if the ice was melting as you ...

... warn us to the hazard of falling pine cones by putting up those yellow diamond-shaped warning signs 'squirrels at work'. They are so cute. And it was nice to know why we kept coming across bits of pine branch lying on the track. For lunch we drove over to neighbouring Pyramid Lake and had a picnic/swim/laundry stop; yes, we have resorted to hand washing clothes in a bucket with cold lake water... In the early evening we did a walk on the other side of Jasper up to ...

... an island in the lake. On the way back, we were about 500m from the entrance to the cabin park and we saw a grizzly cross the road behind us! We pulled over down the road and looked back - it actually hung around the roadside for a few minutes before heading up the bank into the forest. Definitely a highlight and we couldn't believe we saw six bears in the one day! The next morning we drove to the bottom of Maligne Canyon and walked up a lovely trail to the top. It's a ...