Today was always going to be about driving. The plan was to drive from Sun Peaks to Jasper, which is about 450 kms. All the youtube videos we watched suggested that things would be a little quieter in Jasper, so I’d thought the drive might be a bit quieter. As it turned out, I was wrong and it was busy pretty much from end-to-end and there was some pretty heavy rain at times. Added to that was the loss of an hour today because we crossed into Alberta and changed time zones. One of the observations we made was that it is pretty easy to get out of town in Australia and have the road to yourself. It is definitely much harder to do that in Canada!
One other thing I’ve noticed is that speed limits don’t apply to anyone driving a ridiculously large ute. My rental car is a Hyundia Kona and is mostly incapable of much over 100 kms per hour, so I spent much of the day being overtaken. The drive up to Jasper is very scenic, a mixture of mountains, rivers and lakes. Here’s some of the images from the trip, but in the interests of full disclosure, some of these are Deb’s photos as there were few opportunities to stop due to the rain, lots of roadwork and the sheer number of vehicles on the road.
Jasper is a town of around 5,000 people and was originally established in 1813 as a fur trading post. In 1907, the Jasper Forest Park was established and in 1911 the railway reached the town. In 1940 the Icefields Parkway was built to connect Jasper to Lake Louise and Banff, really opening up the region for tourism.
An unfortunate part of its history is that in 1914-16 many eastern Europeans (some 8,000 Ukranians) were interned in Jasper, but due to labour shortages of the time many were released to local farms as unpaid labour. Many of the trails in the Banff National park were built by these labourers. In 2005 the Canadian Parliament passed a law that obliged the government to negotiate compensation for the families of those interned. There is still a prominent Ukrainian community across Canada, making up 3.4% of the population.
Our accommodation in Jasper is another Fairmont property. It is a bit dated in some ways, but still very nice. Once settled in, we went to the main lobby bar and have a cleansing ale or cider and some dinner of Fish Tacos, Pork Belly and a Profiterole. Deb shared the fish tacos and had a lobster roll for her main. The food was good and the people watching even better!
The site is set on a lake and the weather cleared out enough for some cool photos in the evening light. Sunset is at 8:30 and the preceding golden hour truly goes for an hour, unlike the golden 10 minutes at home. Here are some of them.
There is lots of wildlife in this part of Canada, but one does need to take care. We added two Elk, more squirrels, some Canadian Geese and some other birds. There are some pictured and of course some not.
Tomorrow we have a day to explore around Jasper.
Until tomorrow!
Rob's "Beats Working" Blog 