Wapiti Campground, Jasper National Park
After listening to the rain most of the night, imagine our surprise when we woke to blue skies! Yeah. We decided to just stay put for awhile and enjoy our beautiful peaceful campground. I finally made Ned the Father's Day breakfast I promised, ham and avocado omelet with a coffee mocha. He also got a haircut too! My man is looking snazzy.
We hoped to take the cure and soak in the hot springs, but due to the heavy rains there was some water quality issues so it's closed for the day. We'll give it a go again tomorrow. We decided to stay two days in Jasper, partly because it's such a great chill place and partly because the road outta here is still closed. (Okay, maybe more the latter). Our campsite for the weekend is awesome! All the RV's are jammed together in a parking lot, but we opted for a tent site on a loop where we are the only ones. We have the added bonus of being right next to the confluence of the creek and river. Great spot.
We had a great time exploring downtown Jasper and taking in some of the recommended sights. The weather was so great that when we were checking out the rather impressive Jasper Park Lodge we decided to hang out on the deck overlooking Beauvert Lake and luncheon. (You can't just have lunch there, you have to luncheon. That's the same as saying we are summering in the Canadian Rockies). For the record one lunch cost the same as a 2 night stay at the campground. And I didn't even have anything fancy, just the caprese appetizer and Ned had a bison burger. (Which reminds me of a funny Canadian story. When we were at Heritage Park I asked the Royal Mountie if something was a buffalo skin. He answered, "Here in Canada we call it by the correct name, a bison, but you're American so you can call it a buffalo."...but I digress).
We drove up to Maligne Lake supposedly one of the prettiest lakes in the Canadian Rockies. Yep, it's sure gorgeous, but it's darn hard to decide just which lake is the prettiest. They are ALL stunningly beautiful. On our drive we passed Medicine Lake which has an interesting story. It fills up every year in the spring, but in the fall it dries out or becomes a swamp. The Indians were mystified and afraid of this phenomena believing the lake had some kind of magical powers, thus they named it Medicine Lake. Turns out there are many underground aquifers that the lake drains into. Early in the last century entrepreneurial White Men were having trouble running a ferry business across this lake that refused to stay full. Their engineering solution? Stuff the lake draining holes with mattresses and bundles of old magazines. Yeah, didn't work out too well.
We spotted another bear, but actually enjoyed watching all the people who were watching the bear even more. They were in a frenzy to get a photo of the little fella and parked helter skelter on the road and were getting awfully close to him. Cleverly the bear refused to pose.
Knowing we had a really sweet spot for the night, we opted to head back to camp and spend the evening listening to the creek and enjoying the park. Today is the longest day of the year so we are expecting it to stay light until 11ish.
