Tuesday August 8 – Sun Peaks to Jasper

My word – clouds in a blue sky! No smoke haze here! Stuart coughed all of last night so neither of us got the sleep we should have.

We set off early, passing some lovely scenery.

We stopped for morning tea at the town of Clearwater, at the Painted Turtle Restaurant on Dutch Lake. Here the turtles look normal on top but when turn over they have lovely red and black patterns on their underbelly. We saw two sunning themselves on a log.

moose to guard the door!

photo of a photo of the underneath of a turtle

central letter boxes, not personal delivery

much logging over here

The further north wee travel the clearer the air. It is really nice to be away from the smoke haze and to be able to get some great photos. We can easily see the high peaks of Mt Monashee ranges. In this region it is trees, trees, and still more trees!

after a forest fire - this one in 2003

We stopped for lunch at the Mt Robson Provincial Park. Mt Robson is the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains, and at 3954m can have its own climate. It is pot luck if you can see its peak – we were told that only about 25% of visitors get to see it all. Well, today we had a perfect clear view of it all!!! It was breathtaking, this high mountain of ridged rock topped with ice from glaciers (the largest was behind the mountain so we didn’t see that one). We felt privileged, but also rewarded for having put up with smoke haze for so long.

We drove past Moose Lake, the surface of which was like a mirror.

We arrived at Jasper, and were given an hour to wander around the town while our bags were taken up to the Lodge and our rooms sorted. We had to put our watches forward an hour, as we are in mountain time now. We went to a chemist to get Stuart some cough syrup. He’s been wearing a mask that Laurel got him, so hasn’t spread it we hope. Lesley bought a moose in a Mountie uniform for her collection.

Jasper's only set of traffic lights

freight trains are 2-4 km long here

the name of the street caught our attention (pronounced a bit like 'can not drive')

Fairmont Jasper Park is out of town, and is a series of large cabins divided into rooms. We are near others of our group. We caught up on some reading and relaxed before dinner.

view of the lake near our room