Alberta, Alberta

"Alberta"

Alberta, Alberta,
Where you been so long?
Alberta, Alberta,
Where you been so long?
Ain't had no loving
Since you've been gone.

July 18:  Went for a walk around the mostly empty, but very nice campground in Grand Cache.  What used to seem so north now seems so south!  White-throated sparrows, whistling O Canada, Canada, Canada are the only birds singing.  In the USA, they sing, Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, but when in Rome...  A red-breasted nuthatch sneezes out its nasal yank, yank call, but otherwise, the woods are silent.  We head south to Jasper National Park and the Canadian Rockies.

OVERFLOW CAMPING AT JASPER NP

JASPER NP

Jasper is, as pretty much expected, a zoo, crowded with tourists from all over the world.  We never made camping reservations because we didn’t know when we would get here, so guess what?  Everything is full.  They do have a free overflow camping area, fortunately, so we are parked in a big field, but nobody else is near us.  We are surrounded by staggeringly beautiful mountains and the Snaring River, so there is nothing wrong with this picture.  We’ve got everything else we need in house, so no worries, mates!  When in the bustling little town of Jasper, we did visit the Information Center and manage to make reservations for tomorrow night at one of the regular campgrounds (Wabasso) and for two nights in Banff National Park, further south along the Icefields Highway.

MERLIN

July 19: After a quiet night, we got off to our usual unhurried start.  Unless forced to, we’re just not morning people.  Or night people.  We’re just slow and lazy, I guess.   First stop was the luxurious Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, nestled on the shores of crystal clear Lake , where we sipped coffee and root beer.  We were now ready for the day’s adventure - a tram ride to the summit of Whistler Mountain, so named for the whistling marmots that make this rocky mount their home.  The skies at the base were sunny and clear, balmy temps prevailing.  It didn’t look so enticing at the top, where black clouds were sweeping across the peaks.  Crammed into the gondola like sardines, we steeply ascended up and up, gaining 3000 feet in elevation.  Emerging from our protective shell, we were pained to find the weather was somewhat less than ideal.  Forty degrees, windy and as soon as we stepped out on the trail, raining.  But then it got better.  A quarter of a mile further on, the rain turn to wind-blown hail, followed by more rain.  All the while, the views of the sun-soaked valley below, emerald lakes gleaming, golf course winding peacefully through the hills, milky blue Athabaska River streaming through, offered no consolation.  My camera was dripping, our binoculars were drenched.  Soaked, we gave up and returned to the summit cafe’ for a steaming hot cup of chocolate, which can cure almost anything.  We returned to the base, where the sun was still shining and happiness prevailed on this little spot of earth.

HAIL STORM ATOP JASPER MOUNTAIN

WHISTLER MOUNTAIN TRAM

Returning to the terminally cute town of Jasper, dripping with boutiques and quaint restaurants in alpine themes, we found a grocery store and fuel to continue our journey, then on to our campground at Wabasso, about 10 miles south of town.    The campground is beautiful, with widely spaced sites set amongst the pines, picnic tables, free firewood (I made a fire - no injuries), a grizzly that wanders around and a pair of noisy merlins that are nesting somewhere close by.  

Before I forget, here’s some totals for the trip thus far:

Bird species seen: 443

Mammal species seen: 53

Road kill species (for 3 of which I am responsible, I’m sad to say): 31

BANFF SPRINGS GOLF COURSE, 1ST HOLE

July 20-21:  These were days of golf, pure and simple, great and wonderful.  In the 1920s, eminent Canadian golf architect Stanley Thompson was commissioned to build two golf courses in the Canadian Rockies.  In 1925, The Golf Course at Jasper Lodge opened and in 1928,  the course at Banff Springs made its debut.  Both courses took advantage of their mountain valley settings and are magnificent testaments to creating a playground that fits with the land instead of overwhelming it.  Each course is ringed by mountains, so towering and majestic that it is difficult and unwise to pay too much attention to what you are doing on the ground.  The golf courses are among the best in the world, but the scenery is the real star and rightfully steals the show.  Perhaps only the fourth hole at Banff, a steeply dropping par 3 called the “Devil’s Cauldron” was so perfect on its own that it has been named the best par 3 hole in Canada, some say in the world.

ATHABASCA RIVER, BANFF

After playing Jasper, we spent the remainder of the day leisurely driving south along the spectacular Ice Fields Parkway to Banff.  We stopped once at the Athabasca Glacier, to see what remains of this once amazing river of ice.  A huge “Ice Center” has been built, including hotel, restaurant, theater, numerous vendors and very little information about the park or the glacier that is not for sale.  Unfortunately, the Center greatly over-commercializes the natural spectacle.  Visitors can still take a bus ride and walk on the flat portion of the glacier, but you have to go a lot further to get there than when I did this with my small children in 1984.  All along the drive there were beautiful blue rivers and lakes plus jade green ponds, all crystal clear.  The water color is due to a combination of light refraction and mineral and glacial silt content.  I love looking at a rushing river and imagining the trout that are hiding in every pool, but I just can’t get my mind wrapped around the water color.  Are the fish electric blue and green as well?  Too weird.

In Banff, we camped at Tunnel Mountain Village 1, a huge, but very nice campground.  Sort of like Banff in the pines, with hot showers!  

Before playing the Banff course, we gave ourselves a quick tour of the Banff Springs Hotel, which resembles a massive castle set amongst the mountains.  It is one of the elegant old hotels built by the Canadian National Railroad from the 1890s to the 1920s to attract the wealthy to ride the rails, so they could stay in opulence in grand settings.  Now owned and operated by Fairmont Hotels, the theme is still pretty much the same, right down to the Elizabethan harpist playing in the lobby and the outdoor terrace dining overlooking the mountains, looking like an apres ski scene from a Hitchcock movie.  You could simply imagine Cary Grant and Grace Kelly dining elegantly on the terrace, sipping martinis and trading mysterious non sequiturs.  

TERRACE DINING, BANFF SPRINGS HOTEL

From the course, we drove into town, which is no easy task even in a small RV.  The streets are narrow and very congested with traffic and people like us wandering around.  Amazingly, we managed to park Albie on a side street, since all of the parking lots clearly state, “No RVs”.  Walking around town is a fun experience, with all the tourists, tourist oriented shops and restaurants.  Like Jasper, but on a 10X scale, this town was built for tourism and nothing else.  We found an exceptional Indian restaurant for dinner, Masala, with a very pleasant atmosphere and gracious service.  We knew it was the right place as soon as we walked in, since half the diners were Indian.  Gale was delighted to find that at the table next to ours, a gentleman and his lady were from farm country right near where she grew up.  They traded tales for a while until it was time to get down to some serious munching.  The food was excellent, as I had chicken saag (creamy spinach sauce) and Gale a chicken masala topped by sliced pistachios, accompanied by a sumptuous garlic nan bread.  Finally returning to the campground at 10:00 PM, we wisely took advantage of the late hour to quickly empty Albie’s tanks and refill her with fresh water to avoid the lines in the morning.

July 22: I had goofed, thinking Yoho National Park was at the same latitude as Banff, but it was farther north, so we had to backtrack 50 miles to get there.  Unfortunately, this was a Friday, and when, shortly before noon, we arrived at the Kicking Horse Campground, it was already full.  Total bummer at the time.  So we continued on to the much more primitively equipped Hoodoo Creek Campground and secured a site.  Fortunate that we did, because in about one hour, the place was also full.  I don’t know what you do if you are in the middle of nowhere, the campgrounds are all saturated and there’s not a Walmart parking lot to be found.  Camping in non-designated areas is also prohibited, so as we used to say, you are “screwed, blued and tattooed”, whatever that means.  Nonetheless, we converted lemons to lemonade and went for a delightful walk through the woods on an old ranger road.  Not much going on, but we did see olive-sided flycatcher, many pine siskins and a western wood-pewee.  Then we drove to the tiny town of Field, BC, to look for “can’t miss” elk.  Dipped.  The good news is that we stopped at the Visitor Centre and got some tips for other good birding spots for tomorrow and the following day.  Right now, back at the campsite, it’s chow time and my number is up for cooking.  See ya!

July 23:  We had a fun day, finally spending more time on our feet that on our butts.  We found Beaverbrook Road, a small dirt side road off Trans Canada Highway 1, which is the primary route through this very mountainous region.  From Beaverbrook, we walked a few miles along old logging roads, occasionally seeing a few little birds, but mostly they were just pleasant walks through the forest.  From one overlook we had a magnificent view of massive Wapta Falls on Kicking Horse River, about 3/4 mile away.  Continuing west on TCH 1, the road is literally blasted out of the rocks, since the canyon walls are so steep.  In one spot, the road simply slices through a rock wall 100 feet tall, making a cut that looks like a 500 yard long napkin holder.  The descent is steep to the ski resort town of Golden, BC, so we went to the mountain and visited King Horse Mountain Lodge, hoping to thumb a ride on their gondola to more alpine terrain.  Unfortunately, the peaks were sheathed in cotton and a rainstorm was sliding down the valley.  Wisdom, rarely one of my strong suits, prevailed and we decided not to go aloft, not wishing to repeat our sodden, frozen Jasper experience.  A much better choice was to go back down the hill and have an ice cream cone.  A truly superb choice that comes from the wisdom of the aged.

KICKING HORSE RIVER, YOHO NP, BC

We turned around and headed back through the sluice box of a highway to the trail for Wapta Falls.  About 1.5 miles each way, the path through the forest eventually emerged at an overlook.  Here the Kicking Horse River violently crashes over a broad thirty foot drop, sending its robin’s egg blue water frothing into the swirling pool below, a fine mist rising above like an ethereal scarf.  By the time we returned to Albie’s welcoming doors, we were pretty much done for the day.  This old body just ain’t what it used to be.  On the other hand (there is always an other hand, isn’t there?), it is quite delightful to return to the campground early, have a chat with our neighbor to discover that a) he is a birder of sorts and b) he is a blues guitarist and singer, so we had a lot to talk about, except of course the playing and singing, which I can’t do but love to listen.  That was so much better than talking with last night’s Canadian neighbour about the sorry state of American politics.  Two revealing opinions from him, though: a) Canadians cannot understand what the appeal of Donald Trump is to intelligent Americans, and b) Canadians think Barack Obama is a great President.  Interesting stuff.  I never talk to Americans about politics because it is too volatile a topic, but it is fascinating to hear the perspective of those just across our border.  Perhaps I will broach the subject with my bluesman/birder neighbour from Vancouver Island, BC, tonight and see what another Canadian has to say about our political affairs.  

No new birds, mammals or road kill for days now.  Seems like weeks.

July 24:  A wonderful beginning, but overall a frustrating day.  There have been so many people visiting these magnificent parks that at times it’s like living in an apartment complex in the Bronx, but with postcard scenery that often is so amazing it looks like a Hollywood backdrop.  We decided to try and beat the rush by actually getting up early(!) and going for a hike around Emerald Lake in Yoho NP.  Arriving before 8:00 AM, we actually got the number one parking spot for RVs and the place was so quiet you could hear a boreal chickadee wheeze out its song.  The sun was shining, the sky was blue and the temperature was about 48˚.  Perfection!  Emerald Lake is quite unique.  First of all, you can imagine its singular color.  It lies in a depression carved out by a glacier eons ago and i surrounded by the usual stunning mountain peaks with twisted sedimentary forms in the rock.  One side of the lake is usually sunny and has typical open dry boreal forest habitat.  The other side is highly shaded by the steep mountains and as a result has the look and feel of a temperate rainforest, replete with deep mosses, shady glens, burbling mountain rills and deep dark forest, which is a very rare ecosystem this far north.  To top it off, the north side of the lake, from whence the glacier came and went, is an ancient alluvial fan from the mountains combined with delta sediment from the small Emerald River.  The sediments from both of these sources will ultimately fill in the lake, but in the meantime, they cause the water to be a sparkling jade green.  The walk around the lake is a little over three miles (5.3K - we are in Canada after all). We ambled at our usual strolling pace, taking in as much as we could, reading the very well done interpretive signs that line the path (where else do you think I got all the above information?).  As expected there weren’t many birds around, but we did find two American three-toed woodpeckers side-by-side seriously flaking and digging at a Douglas fir and it appeared that one was an adult showing a young one the tricks of the trade.  There is a very nice lodge here, where we enjoyed a cup of hot tea on the patio after our exertions.  By the time we got back to Albie, the lake was overrun with rental canoes and rowboats, complete with people screaming from them, no doubt in joy, but sound really carries on the water.  There were literally hundreds of folks milling about, snapping selfies with the lake and mountains and the parking lot was overflowing way down the road.  Definitely time to take home the sweet memories and get out of Dodge.  We found a nearby park dump site with fresh water, so we were able to have lunch, clean up and move on down the road.

EMERALD LAKE, YOHO NP, BC

EMERALD LAKE, YOHO NP, BC

We spent the rest of the day driving south through Banff, Canmore and then on the what we thought was going to be quiet Route 40 circling around Calgary through another section of the mountains.  This road goes through Highwood Pass, which is over 7000’ elevation and we hoped to get out and wander around above the tree line to see what we could find.  Along this “quiet” byway there were so many people out on this beautiful day that stopping anywhere was almost impossible - the parking areas were full and vehicles were parked willy-nilly alongside the highway.  Not quite the wilderness experience we were hoping for.  The pass was overrun with hikers, mountain bikers and too many people like us, so we just kept moving.  The only consolation was seeing two groups of bighorn sheep females and their lambs blocking traffic.  Onward to the little town of Okotoks, Alberta for a date with the laudromat and, believe it or not, a Vietnamese dinner.  Then camping for the night at Walmart.  What could be more American?  Oops, Canadian?