Day of jaw-dropping fire and ice
While Sunday’s leisurely alpine drive was a relaxing delight, Monday’s drive through Jasper and Banff National Parks was nothing short of astounding! We started with the usual gorgeous and varied mountain terrain. The ever-changing clouds made every vista special. It does not seem possible these photos were all taken at the same general time and place!
Then we traveled part of where Jasper had been hit with a pretty devastating wildfire last year. You can already see nature recovering after only a year. Spend enough time in any of the PNW national parks and you see lots of evidence of wildfires and regeneration. This one encompassed thousands of acres.
Our fire explorations also included a little jaunt down to a beautiful glacial river with Josie. The milky green glacier water is always so cool to see.
After starting the day’s journey with fire, and ended with ice. The road we traveled was called the Icefields Parkway, and it was perfectly named, because it was basically an all-day glacier buffet!
Because these sites were so special, I will post that part of the drive in a “Part 2” entry!
So much to see all day long. Even our lunchtime picnic spot was ridiculously scenic. #bolognasandwichesforever
This next item does not photograph well at all, but it is the coolest railroad engineering feat (and this is not limited to Steve’s opinion!) We have stopped here before, and I was legitimately excited to see it in action again.
Because of the steepness of the terrain in this particular pass, the railroad built two sets of spiral tunnels for the trains to literally wind through. They are so close together that the front cars are passing through the later tunnels while the back cars are still working their way to the first. It’s just really neat to see one train snake through multiple spirals all at the same time. In the impossible to read photos below, we are looking down at the action, and basically the train is snaking left to right at point 1, then down and around through a tunnel and out at point 2, the through another tunnel and out at point 3. Go trains!
Also on the way to our campground, although I had sworn off the camera for the rest of the day, I had to break that promise. The sun suddenly broke through the clouds and sent rays of light streaming down. So that had to be captured. And captured. And captured!
Our campground for the night was nicely wooded - some of our RV campgrounds are, and others are more utilitarian. State and national park campgrounds are the most secluded and wooded, but they don’t have any of the hookups. So it’s typically a trade-off: cement/services vs nature/seclusion. This one was pretty nice. Decent services and a nice wooded feel. So we took advantage of it and hung up Montana and Elijah’s hammock and had a nice little campfire as Steve cooked us up some steaks and sweet corn. It rained lightly, but our van’s awesome automatic awning kept us cozy while we enjoyed the fire.
