Made It To The Mountains!

And boy oh boy was it worth the trip.  Jasper, Alberta is a lovely little town, with a picture postcard train station.  Its main industry is tourism, and everyone is exceptionally nice and friendly.  Great restaurants and bakeries, one of them had a write up in O! magazine.  (Terrific croissants.)  There's only one ski mountain, but tons and tons of hiking and riding trails as well as lakes, ponds, streams and rivers.  Mom and I are not going hiking, riding, fishing, swimming, skiing, canoeing or spelunking.   Mom left her cane in Florida and we've been looking for a "souvenir of Canada" one in every store we've seen.  Meanwhile I am her cane.

Got the rental car, figured out which pedal was the accelerator and off we went.

Stayed the first night in the mountains at the Fairmont Jasper Lodge, which is not one of the old Canadian Pacific Railroad hotels.  This didn't get off to a great start, they claimed my reservation was canceled on Sept. 24th, did not have an easily accessible room for Mom, and put us in a cabin out in the back of beyond.  Little on the shabby side for a Fairmont Resort, was not impressed with the broken concrete entrance to our cabin or the frayed cushions:

Nope, that wasn't making a big impression on me at all.  

BUT ... what did make an impression, and I'm sorry I don't have a photo of it, is the GINORMOUS elk that we saw when we came back from dinner!  It was waiting for us to go by in the car, and we were waiting for it to cross.  I've been reading the signs around Jasper that say you should not get between a buck and a female during mating season, not even in a car.   And there were three females on the other side of the road.  So we waited.  He waited.  We waited.  Eventually he strolled across the drive, head held high, all the time in the world. WOW!!!  He must have had 20 points - we could have almost touched him we were so close.  I thought about going back out and getting a photo but was afraid I would scare him with the flash and I didn't want to spook a very large wild animal, with hooves and horns (many, many horns - probably teeth too, but he wasn't smiling so I don't know for sure) in a dark, unfamiliar setting.  Especially since I'm not much of a runner these days. 

I checked at the front desk the next day.  They told me that the elk are easily spooked and that I did the right thing.  But what a picture that would have been - I'd have been a shoe-in for the next opening at National Geographic!! 

Then we were off for Lake Louise ... oh, wait until I tell you about the Icefield Parkway ...