Canada Road Trip June-July 2024: Sunday to Jasper/Hinton

Today was an odd day. Started with disappointment, ended with a more positive attitude! First of all, it was raining. It rained on and off all day, with bits of sun later in the afternoon. The problem arises with such mobs of people! We never knew about Canada Day - which is this weekend. Its like our July 4th. Banff was really crowded, but first thing we visited the Cascade Gardens behind the Park Headquarters building. Very pleasant place with mostly annuals. Then we went to the famous "Cave and Basin" which is a hot spring complex that was the very first National Park in Canada. If you plan in advance, you could have a nice soak!

Then we headed north about an hour to Lake Louise. This is the ugly part of the day. All parking lots are full and the tickets to the shuttle buses are sold out. So, we were unable to see either Lake Louise nor Moraine Lake, nor the Fairmont. Bummer.

Undetered, we continue north on Rt 1 just a ways before the two lane divided speedway heads west and we continue north on Rt 93, a more reasonable two-lane, park like highway. In spite of the rain and clouds, the mountains are spectacular. We stopped at the famous "spiral tunnels" and, as luck would have it, there was a train going through! An unexpected place was the "Ice Fields", or Glaciers. The main one that can be seen from the road is called Athabasca. Thousands (really) of tourists we hiking up to the glacier, some were riding in specially equiped big-tired machines.

We approached Jasper but headed north around the city to Hinton, where our hotel is. We'll check out Jasper in the morning, then on down to Kamloops. The mountains at this end of the park are very different.

An observation: I have never seen so many Indians! Women in saris, young men wearing turbans. Are they Canadians? Did they get cheap flights from Mumbai? They seem to spend a lot of time taking pictures of themselves!

So the day started off badly, but in the end, "its all good!"

257 miles 40.9 mpg