Jasper, Alberta

The train arrived at Jasper station at 2.15, I then had a 10 minute wait for the taxi to take me to Jasper Park Lodge.  It seems that many of my fellow travellers are staying at the same place. Arriving at JPL I am greeted by a young lady named Karen who had the warmest smile and made me feel at home right away.   I check in at reception, get my room key and then my luggage is loaded into the lodge shuttle vehicle and I am driven round to my cabin.  It is actually only a short walk but I wouldn't want to try to manouvre Mack and MM through the ice and snow.

I leave everything in my room and walk back outside to enjoy wandering around in the snow.  The Lodge is absolutely gorgeous, all little lanes with rows of cabins with snow covered roofs.  I could definitely see myself having another holiday here and staying 2 weeks instead of 2 nights.  On my wander I find Lac (Lake) Beauvert, completely covered in snow but with signs warning of thin ice, so I won't be investigating that lake too closely.  I can hear voices to my left so off I go to seek out the source, you wouldn't believe it, although, some of you might, there were people in a swimming pool that is completely surrounded by snow, but it must be warm, there is hell of a lot of steam coming off it.  I can't see me trying that out either, you know me and water.

Back to the cabin for a quick shower and change then off to the main lodge to check out the shops, restaurants and bars.  Met up with the English couple, Mandy and Graham, and had a drink with them.  They are doing the same tour as me tomorrow afternoon.  They are going into town in the morning so I might bump into them there seeing as I need a post office to send another parcel home.   That should lighten my load, at least for a couple of hours, well, I am going into town and there are souvenir shops there too.  lol

Had dinner in the Emerald room, the food, as it has been everywhere so far, was really good, I'm eating like you wouldn't believe here, stuff I've never even heard of, and to the dismay of at least one person back home I have actually been eating olive bread, and enjoying it.  Must be getting used to the taste of those salty little black things.

After another wander I returned to my room and loaded more photo's, wrote another couple of pages, but will have to take the laptop over to the main lodge to get on the net.  The only hotspot is there, nothing in my room.  I guess we are out in the middle of nowhere, but it's the best middle of nowhere I've ever seen.



Tuesday morning and up well and truly before  the birds.  4.30 actually.  I just can't help myself, I have to look out of the window to make sure the snow is still there and guess what, IT IS SNOWING.  Too early though to be going out wandering around taking photo's so I just sit and watch it thinking "this is stupid, go back to bed, get more  sleep."  Chance would be a fine thing, I lay there reading for a while, turn out the light, for all of about 2 minutes then get up and have a bath.  The excitement is just too much for me, I have to get out there and into that snow whilst it's still falling.

I take my first step and my boot is no longer visible, the snow is up over my jeans, oh this is fantastic.  The roads are still covered, only a couple of  vehicles have been through this early.  More photo opportunities, I just hope I don't wake anyone up as I have to use the flash this time of the morning. It is hard to describe the atmosphere right now, it is so quiet, not a sound to be heard, not even the snow hitting my coat.  I just wander around, soaking up the silence and taking photo's at every opportunity, taking care not to take one directly in front of anyone's window.  It's still dark out, don't expect to see daylight for at least another hour and half.  7am and I'm back in my room, uploading the photo's I've taken but there's still plenty of time before I have to go into town.  The post office doesn't open till 9, so at 8 I take off again for another walk, camera in hand of course.  By this time, the guys are out clearing the roads with machinery and some of the staff are shovelling the paths by hand, including Karen. (I know which one I'd rather have, there is a heap of snow to clear.)  
 We stop and chat again, seeing the camera hung around my neck Karen says "come on, let me take a photo of you in the snow for everyone back home."  That done she said she knew another good place to have a photo taken so I followed here through the main lodge out to the back where the pool is.  Nothing is too much trouble for her, it's like she's known you for years.  


Took a taxi into town, posted the parcel, then wandered around the streets, getting snowed on continuously and losing sight of my feet at every step.  The taxi driver recommended Coco's for a good breakfast so that's my next stop.  Now the stomach has been satisfied, the shopper in me needs satisfying too.  The first shop I was going to hit was the RCMP Shop, but the lady at the post office told me, when I asked for directions, that he closed down last week and moved to Banff.  Not going there for it, it's a 3 hour drive, imagine how much that would cost by cab, although I'm sure I'd find a driver that would be more  than willing to take me. I'm sure they'd love a good  fare like that, but sorry guys, no go.  I did find a couple of other souvenir shops that had some interesting stuff though so I had a very eventful shopping spree.  The lady at the last shop called a taxi for me rather than send me back out in the snow for a phone box, not that I minded, I could have walked around in that for hours.  On the way back to the lodge the taxi driver slowed down and pointed out a herd of elk lying in the snow next to the road, on the right of us and ahead of us, and one elk ambling slowly across the road with a bloody big truck bearing down on it.  I was silently pushing the elk faster, I didn't want to see what would happen if the truck hit it, dead roo's are bad enough but this thing was enormous.  The driver stopped the cab, wound my window down and waited while I took a couple of photo's.  The cab drivers here are as good as tour guides, they are more than happy to tell you about the place and to point out places of interest.



Back at the lodge, I wander down to the newsagency to get some  pre paid postcards and find another shop that I thought could produce a couple of interesting gifts so of course I couldn't walk past the door.  This is getting to be as bad as me and shoe shops, for those of you that know me and shoes, you know how bad that is.  Back in my room at 12 and there are two messages from the tour company informing me the tour I was booked on this afternoon has been cancelled as the roads are closed and don't look like being opened anytime soon.  They offered me another tour which was fine by me, I'll go where ever they want to take me.  As much as I was looking forward to a wildlife tour I'm sure I'll see more wildlife on my way to Toronto.  My alternate tour was an ice walk in the Maligne (pronounced Maleen) Canyon.  A 4km walk through snow and occasionally ice.  The first 500m were up hill and by the time we reached the top my legs were killing me, but it was worth it, the view was spectacular.  The Maligne River never freezes, it's water comes up from under the ground and in places that means it comes from  high up in the mountains.  There are waterfalls that never freeze and some that build up with ice over ice continually, creating some amazing formations.  There was one where you could actually get behind the fall and take photo's but it was an experience getting in there when the ground was a solid block of ice.  A couple of young guys that were with us, long legged of course, managed to get one foot behind an ice pillar and push themselves up anchoring themselves at the next pillar, but me, short legged that I am, couldn't even make it to the first pillar, but did that stop me?  No way mate.  I sat on my butt and got the guys to push me up into the hollow until I could get my foot behind the pillar, then I was fine, I managed to get right in, much to the mirth of everyone else watching.  Getting out was easy, it was just like being on a kid's slide.  lol.

One section of the canyon trail is called "The Squeeze" and we soon found out why.  The gap between the rocks was narrower than my foot.  Our tour guide, Willy, went first to show us how it's done, yeah right mate, you've done this a thousand times and are an expert by now.  It wasn't easy I can tell you, sometimes it pays to be small, Willy and one of the other guys just grabbed a hand each and pulled me up and through the gap, the others all struggled and one lady was basically dragged on her side by her husband and Willy, all the way through and up to the top.  It was definitely well worth doing though, the views were awesome, looking down into valleys and up at the rock faces with a mix of  snow and ice.  I just wish the photo's could really show how incredible it is, but you'd have to see it for yourself to appreciate it.  Here are the photo's anyway.  Hope you're not sick of snow yet, I'm hoping to see more.  

Back at the lodge, Mandy, Graham and I go in to sit by the fire and have a hot cuppa while we wait for 5pm to arrive.  At 5pm Jasper time it will officially be Graham's Greenwich Mean Time birthday.  The Big 50.  Mandy had brought all his birthday cards with her for him to open.  We had a couple of drinks to celebrate with him.   Once the celebrations were over I did a quick trip back to the pool to get some  photo's of the lights around it and back to my room, I'm busting.  lol.   Housekeeping have been in whilst I've been away and I couldn't believe what they'd done with my hairbrushes,   toothbrush and toothpaste,   very flash.  I notice there's a message waiting for me, it  was head of  housekeeping apologizing for my bottle of perfume being broken, great observation George, it was on the shelf above the hairbrushes this morning, how come you didn't see it?  lol  Not to worry, he had checked out the price of it on the net and offered to by me an equivalent priced perfume from their shop or knock it off my bill.   Bet you can't guess which option I went for.

Time now to get the bags packed ready for the train trip to Toronto tomorrow, and Mack and Mini Mack are feeling a whole lot lighter today, I'm sure the porters will be happy about that.  Took a few more photo's of the lodge, the pool at night and a couple more in town whilst waiting for the train.