Sunday, May 24, 2009

Car camping Canada style

Last Monday was the Victoria Day (Queens Birthday) holiday so Aleisha and I headed out on our first Canadian car camp, the destination was just south of the township of Jasper in Jasper National Park. We took a scenic route via the Icefields Parkway, which turned out to be one of the most spectacular roads we have ever driven down. We were also lucky enough to spot a Black bear and cub on the side of the road, hopefully all our future bear encounters are as uneventful. Sunday was spent doing a couple of day walks and generally relaxing. Unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse Sunday night and the snow set in. On Monday it was still snowing so we decided to take the "safe" route back to Calgary via Edmonton, as this would avoid the high alpine passes and hopefully most of the heavy snow. In the end we didnt avoid the snow and to make matters worse we woefully underestimated the distance. So about 700km later, after some of the worst driving conditions we have ever seen (not to mention the worst drivers, we saw two trucks that had rolled and about 6 other cars that had gone off the road) we made it back to Calgary.


The Icefields Parkway

Black bears

One of the many glaciers that flow from the icefield.

Doing the tourist thing on the Glacier

Not all the Canadian animals want to eat you.

3 comments:

AGL said...

Wow! Black bears, rolled trucks and cars and some amazing landscape – sounds like you guys are having a blast :-)

Cheers Allan

AGL said...

No, no :-) Iain is safe for 2009 ... If he makes a trip or two. I will probably break 400 before the end of the year, but not much more. Jarrod might be heading towards +400 as well - 2 weeks in the red center - my guess is that he cleaned up out there ... unless he wasted all his time holding hands with Adelle ;-)

Jarrod said...

If you position yourself between the mother and cub you should be able to get some great photos as she moves in to decapitate you.