Family and Friends - Day 5

Evan woke up with his eye nearly swollen shut, which really made me feel bad, as I saw the mosquito sitting on his face while we were standing in line for a ride. However, it bit him before I was able to move over and get rid of it for him. I gave him a couple of doses of Benadryl during the day, and it looked much better by the end of the day, but I don't know if that is because of the drugs or just because the swelling went away on its own.

The plan today was to leave Calgary, visit the Columbia Icefield and then spend the night in Jasper. We wanted to get to the Icefield around lunch, but many things conspired to prevent that. First of all, I immediately got on the Trans-Canada going the wrong way and the first exit, which I took, was not a regular cloverleaf, but just a merge into another freeway, so we had to drive for 10 minutes around the outskirts of Calgary before I found a place to turn around. The second delay was the wonderful cash grab from the Government of Canada, since you have to stop and pay to get into Banff National Park, even if all you want to do is drive to BC. Of course, I picked a lane that was not moving. The third delay was when we stopped for gas in Banff. The first gas station had a huge lineup that was not moving, so we abandoned it and drove around trying to find another one. After filling up, we got stopped by a train leaving Banff. And the final delay was road construction. It's a bit funny - I expected traffic to be the biggest problem we would encounter today, but the roads were quite empty. The Trans Canada was a little busier than highway 11 normally is, and the Icefield Parkway was very quiet - at least until the Columbia Icefield.

Because of all the delays, we only made it to Saskatchewan Crossing (around 50km from the Icefield) at 12:30. The place is a regular tourist trap, as it has a restaurant, but since there is no competition, all the meals were around $20 a piece. Not wanting to spend that much money, I purchased buns, sandwich meat and a bag of chips and we ate lunch sitting in and in front of the car and admiring the mountains surrounding us.

We then made the short trip to the Icefield, where we found all the traffic. The parking lot was very close to full and the information centre was packed full of people. We drug the kids through the people and stood in a slow moving line to purchase tickets for a bus tour of the glacier. Children under 6 were free, provided they could sit on their parent's lap, but the girl only charged me for two adult tickets, so I was a bit worried that all five of us would have to stuff into two seats. The tour starts in a regular bus, which takes you on a short trip up to where the fancy glacier buses are and initially we all packed in to two seats. However, it was obvious that the bus was not going to be full, so we were able to spread out (and we got a $24.95 discount, since Alexander rode for free).

The glacier buses have six big tractor tires on them, so that they get good traction on the ice. The first part of the trip involves going down a 32 percent grade to the glacier, which is scary even if you know that the buses are designed to make the trip. Once on the glacier, Xander was obviously intrigued, as he kept watching the water flowing past the road - it was a bright blue colour. After a short trip, you get out of the bus and get to walk around on the glacier for 20 minutes or so. There was a channel of water running all around the parking area, so I stuck my hand in to drink some of the water - it was extremely cold. Each of the kids also got to stick their hand in, as did Sandra. After posing for some pictures and letting Jonathan explore the ice, we boarded the bus and returned to our car.









Since it was late, I tried to hurry to get to Jasper, but there was now a lot of traffic on the road, including a lot of people more interested in the view than in maintaining the speed limit. However, we made it into to Jasper just after supper time. We got settled in our hotel room and then walked through the tourist section of town after eating at A&W.

The drive today was very nice and scenic. The kids really loved the mountains - Evan kept pointing out each new one he saw, and he kept calling the mountain with the glacier "our mountain". I was once again reminded of the fact that Canada got the good part of the Rockies, since the mountains up here look much nicer than the ones in the US, especially the farther south in the US you go.