July 21-22, 2013, Banff and Jasper National Parks (continued)






Sunday we drove into the town of Banff.  South of Lake Louise we saw a grizzly bear walking along the fence on the opposite side of the highway.  The highway between Lake Louise and Banff is a divided 4 lane road and is very busy so, unfortunately, we were not able to stop to get a picture.  We got to add another bear sighting to our list – that now makes six.  In Banff we rode the Banff Gondola – an 8 minute ride to the summit of Sulphur Mountain.  The gondola climbs 2,293 feet to an elevation of 7,486 ft at the upper terminal.









When we reached the upper terminal Rex and Nancy took the summit walk, a 1 km boardwalk along the summit ridge to the Cosmic Ray National Historic Site of Canada and the Sanson’s Peak Meteorological Station.  At the summit is a stone hut that was an historical weather observatory built in 1903.  Below the observatory is a large concrete platform – all that remains of the Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Station.  The cosmic ray station was completed by the National Research Council in 1956, for the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) an undertaking involving 66 countries and a dozen scientific disciplines.  The study of cosmic rays held a prominent place, with 88 cosmic ray stations in operation worldwide during the International Geophysical Year.  In 1960 The University of Alberta at Calgary took over the station, which was closed in 1978 and the building dismantled in 1981.









From the top the views were beautiful.











Here we are looking down at the town of Banff with Minnewanka Lake in the background.













We thought this view of the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel with the Bow River behind it was great.







Mariah stayed at the Upper Terminal and got on-line so she could catch up with her mom & dad and friends.  We do not have internet access at our campground.  We all ate lunch in the Summit Café while enjoying the great views.  After looking in the gift shop we rode the gondola back down.





We drove across town to Lake Minnewanka where we took a one hour interpretative cruise of the lake.  Lake Minnewanka is the largest lake in Banff National Park and the only one that allows motor boats.









At the far end of the lake as the boat was turning around we got this great view.  Our guide asked us how this view was different from what we had been seeing during our time in Banff and Jasper.  At first we couldn’t figure it out but then realized there are no mountains in the distance – that is the edge of the Canadian Rockies.









As we were heading back into the dock we could see two separate groups of Big Horn Sheep along the dam.  There were a number of ewes and a few lambs.










After another long, but great day we started on our 2 hour drive back to David Thompson Resort.  North of Lake Louise we saw this black bear beside the road.  We watched him grazing for a while – bear number 7!






After three long days of driving and sightseeing we are all tired and decided to take Monday off.  We spent the day relaxing and took the dogs for a short hike along the lake.  We have really enjoyed our time here – the Canadian Rockies are beautiful and we got to see three black bears and one grizzly bear along with big horn sheep, mountain goats and some deer!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 4-6, 2009

Image
June 4, 2009 We drove Northwest of Jasper along the Yellowhead Highway to Mount Robson Provincial Park. We saw a moose along the river in the distance but wasn’t close enough to get a picture. We saw Yellowhead Lake and Moose Lake, and had a picnic lunch at the Mt. Robson Visitors Center. The scenery is spectacular – a picture of Mt. Robson. Our site at Whistler campground. June 5 We left Jasper in the sunshine and warm but the further North we got, the colder, rainier and more grey it got. As we turned north on route 40 to Grand Paririe, we started to hit a little snow. Didn’t last long but really woke us up. It stayed rainy and grey until we got to Grand Cache then it started to clear. We also got our first real windshield chip today, but a trip to WalMart and a windshield repair kit later we were fixed. The land here is somewhat hilly, swampy and covered with trees. There are some really big oil and gas complexes and some large lumber mills such as the one we saw in Grand Paririe. ...
Read more

August 24-26, 2009

Image
We headed towards Flathead Lake Monday morning and stopped in Kalispell to get our air conditioner repaired. It had stopped working a couple of weeks ago and August is not the time to be without an air conditioner. The RV dealer we stopped at gave us the name of the guy who does their air conditioning work. He was able to fix the air conditioner (a switch had burned out) in a couple of hours and we were on our way. We drove to Polson, MT at the south end of Flathead Lake and are going to stay here for a few days. We are staying at Eagle Nest RV, which has a cherry orchard on one side, a golf course on one side and a horse pasture on another side. It is a really nice park with lots of grass and trees. Unfortunately, we are at the end of the cherry season and we might not be able to find any fresh cherries. Tuesday morning we decided to take a drive around Flathead Lake. This is a very scenic area with lots of fruit orchards. We found a fruit stand and bought cherries, peaches, tomatoes ...
Read more

July 28, 2009

Image
We left Valdez this morning in rain and fog and retraced our route back up the Richardson Highway. We ran out of the fog and rain after we went over Thompson Pass and thought we would be able to see more of the scenery. Not to be, shortly we ran into more smoke. We stopped at the visitor center at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park but it was really smoky so we didn’t stay very long. The ranger there (we think he was a ranger but he looked about 15 years old!) told us that there are currently 60 fires in Alaska and the smoke here is from the fires North of here around Fairbanks. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the largest national park in the US at 13.2 million acres. There are only 2 short gravel roads in the park so access is limited to backpacking, hiking and flight seeing. The park is mainly wilderness and has 4 major mountain ranges in it and includes 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the US. Unfortunately, because of the smoke we were not able to see any of them. We turned off the R...
Read more