Jasper National Park

A couple years ago, I was talking to my friend Rachael and she said something about "Banff," and I thought she MUST be making that word up. It didn't seem like it could possibly be an actual place. But as I was doing research for this trip I found that it WAS an actual place! A famous national park, in fact. And Rachael also told me about Jasper, which is another national park right above Banff. She said they liked Jasper even better because it was a little smaller and less crowded. So I wanted to visit both if we could, but the rental house I found for the second half of our trip was nearer to Banff, so I wasn't sure we could make Jasper work.

Then I started looking at pictures of Jasper and of Icefields Parkway, which is a scenic highway between the two parks, and I really wanted to go there. But it would mean a lot of driving—extra driving on a trip that already had SO much driving. It would make what could be a five-hour drive to our rental house turn into a ten-hour drive instead. I thought the children might not appreciate that. However, after thinking and thinking and thinking about it, I decided we might not ever be up in that area again—and if we could just get going from Edmonton really early in the morning, maybe it would be doable. (I should clarify that I, personally, did not have to do all this driving. Sam, that man among men, did it all. All I had to do was sit there and sometimes navigate.)

I even went online and got us tickets to go on a little boat ride to see Spirit Island, which is an island in Lake Maligne in Jasper that you can't get to any other way besides by boat. (Which was very optimistic of me, actually, since the tickets were for a specific time and it all depended on us getting on the road at 5 a.m. and not having any mishaps on the way.)

Well…we DID get on the road on time. Somehow. Everything was misty and foggy, especially near all the little ponds and lakes that are everywhere up there. Then after awhile, everything just looked like this:

Boreal Forest as far as you could see in any direction! It was really beautiful. SO MANY TREES, but not like it is on the East Coast or in Montreal.

And there were wildflowers—millions of them, everywhere there was a sunny stretch of grass beside the road. I kept trying to take pictures but they were too tiny to show up.

After all that flat forested land, it was really striking when we came to a little hill and we could see the Canadian Rockies and Jasper way off in the distance. Those steep cliffs!

Some of these pictures don't look very good because I was taking them through our awful, insect-encrusted car windows. But they give the general idea. After we got into Jasper we headed straight for Maligne Lake. There were several other lakes on the way, all beautiful!

This is Maligne Lake. It's really long and thin, nestled between rows of mountains.

We saw lots of pretty wildflowers along the shore.

And amazingly, we made it there in time for our boat ride! The children all loved the boat, except maybe Ziggy. It started out okay, with him opining that we were on a "garbage truck," but went downhill from there as he started to fuss and then cry and wouldn't stop. The worst part was not really the crying, but Sebastian's frantic and angry efforts to quiet him and berate Sam and me (as only a self-conscious fourteen-year-old can) for not doing something about it. Finally we took Zig out on the back deck of the boat where he could feel the wind, and he was perfectly happy there, so that was a relief. He even consented to be held by some nice Japanese tourists who wanted to take a picture of him. :)

My great worry (other than making it there at all, that is) had been that it would rain the whole time we were in Jasper and we wouldn't be able to SEE the mountains all around! There had been rain in the forecast there for the last ten days I'd been anxiously checking it. But we were so lucky. There were passing clouds, but they just made the mountains seem higher and more mysterious, and there was also plenty of beautiful sun that brought out the turquoise color of the water. I was so grateful!

We passed some glaciers as we rode up the lake. I loved the blue color of the packed-down ice!

Seb got some good video with his GoPro. I love that U-shaped valley there between the peaks!

Teddy observed the workings of the boat with great interest.

And then we got to Spirit Island, where we were permitted to get out and look around for a few minutes. It was so beautiful!!

Ziggy was still not completely at ease (he kept saying he had to go to the bathroom, and there WAS no bathroom on the boat or on the island, and he is so new to toilet-training that he doesn't like to just go in the woods, so it was a great worry to us—though in the end he DID manage to wait for 90 whole minutes until we got back to a bathroom, which was amazing!)—and I will not pretend that there wasn't some sibling unpleasantness that provided a stark contrast to the peaceful beauty of the surroundings—but we will pass lightly over that and just concentrate on this PLACE. Which looked like something out of a fairy-tale!

The lake turned varying shades of blue and green as the sun went in and out of the clouds.

And here is Ziggy—back in the parking lot after visiting the bathroom—looking quite pleased with himself! As well he should!

The other long stop we made in Jasper was to hike in the Maligne Canyon area. It is so cool, because it's a slot canyon, but unlike our red rock, desert-y slot canyons, this is lush and green and has huge waterfalls in it! There are a series of bridges you can go on that cross over the canyon in several places. The hike wasn't hard—even Ziggy was able to trudge along holding someone's hand most of the time—but it was AMAZING.

The trouble is that the canyon confines the waterfalls so that the pictures just end up reading as a jumble of trees and moss and water. I just couldn't get to the right vantage point to convey what was really going on! But the narrowness of the canyon, combined with its great depth, made the waterfalls seem extra powerful. I'm sure there are falls that carry a bigger volume of water, but these just felt SO forceful. It was fascinating to see the sweeps and swirls created in the canyon walls by the rush of water, rather than by desert sand and wind.