Icefields Parkway

Peyto Lake. Blue.
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Spent the night at a hostel in Lake Louise, 4 bunks in a dorm (very Shrewsbury school.....Stan 'fagged' for me, Archie for Sam), bit expensive for a bed for the night but we had little choice. In the morning set off to Jasper along the Icefield Parkway, a road which starts at Lake Louise, ends in Jasper, 230km away and is described as one of the world's best drives. Set the cruise control to 80kph as we had all day to do the drive and didn't want to miss the 'guaranteed' wildlife sightings.

Eagle. Honest. Okay, use your zoom function then!
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Along the way we regularly broke the journey with short stops at viewing points or short walks through the snow to points of interest. Peyto Lake, similar to Lake Louise (the blue one) was fantastic, as was Hoseshoe Lake (a lake, in the shape of a horseshoe funnily enough) and the Columbia Icefield Glacier but soon we wearied of all this magnificence. Discovering that you can overload on sights, which seen once in a blue moon, would have you standing open-mouthed in awe, we found ourselves turning up at a waterfall or whatever, taking a photo, throwing a stick in and walking back to the car!

Where the Wild Things Aren't

Horseshoe Lake. Not talking by this point.
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Maybe it was something to do with the 'guaranteed' wildlife not showing their faces that day. After 100km or so Sam was convinced she had seen a deer ("something big and brown with its head down", ie a log) and another 100km along we did see an American Bald eagle perched on a tree which launched itself into the air and impressed us greatly. At one stop off we were warned by some people returning to the car park that they had seen a black bear just 5 minutes ago and to be careful. Feeling like 'prey' we continued and bumped into a ranger with a rifle who was looking for said bear. This did not help, and although the faces we put on were brave our bellies were yellow and we got back to the safety of the car at a reasonable trot. Another deer sighting just before Jasper bought our grand totals to;

Archie, unable to smile, because of the "bear".
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Bear 0, Elk 0, Moose 0, Caribou 0, Deer 1.5 (can't count Sam's sighting as a full score) ,Mountain Goat 0, Long Horned Sheep 0, Eagle 1, Squirrel (or similar) 2, Blue thing in a tree (Archie) 1, Black and white thing, possible Zebra (Stan) 1.

In a word.......pathetic!

Doesn't sound like one of the world's best drives does it, but it was. I loved every minute of it. The scenery was once again superb, the driving easy and even the weather was spectacular (sunshine, sleet, rain, blizzards). And had we all seen Stan's Zebra it would have rounded off a great day!