We left Jasper on Thursday morning and got on to the Icefields Parkway again.   This time with the purpose of driving the length of it down to Lake Louise where we had booked 3 nights in a campsite there.

The Parkway forms part of Highway 93, which starts at Jasper and continues all the way down 1,720 miles down through the States down to Wickenburg in Arizona it is 143 miles from Jasper to Lake Louise that cuts through some of the most stunning parts of the Rockies – Conde Nast Traveller rate it as one of the top drives in the world and it’s not hard to see why!

It was built for sightseeing with plenty of pull-offs with hiking paths, lakes and view points. I must have taken over 200 photos down this one stretch of road alone. Mountain peaks, endless stretches of rapids and turquoise lakes and glacier fields. Stunning!

A few miles down we stopped to take some pictures and got talking to lovely lady we had seen biking a way back on the road. Turns out she was cycling (alone) across Canada. She had started in Alaska at about the same time we left Halifax and was headed to St Johns, Newfoundland. What an amazing adventure! The irony was she kept on saying how exciting our trip was! We posed for a photo together then headed off.

We couldn’t stop thinking about her and her inspirational journey so when we stopped at the next rest area we left her our details and a cup of coffee and cake with the waiters there. We weren’t sure she would get them but got a lovely email from Yumi a few days later – the cake made it onto her blog www.awoab.weebly.com

At the midway point is the Icefield Centre. From here you can see 3 enormous glaciers including the Columbia Icefield and the Athabasca Icefield. The icefield forms the largest area of ice south of Alaska – some 125 square miles and in parts is as deep as the Eiffel Tower is tall!!

We took a tour in one of the 6-wheel drive Snow Coaches up onto the glacier, which was very cool. Counter intuitive to everything we are taught about ice – i.e. NOT to walk on it and certainly not to drive 6 enormous 10 tonne ruddy coaches packed with tourists onto it!!

Anyway, we went, took some pictures, marveled at the age and size of the lump of ice then filled our water bottles with the melt water and got the hell off there!!

Pleased to be able to tick Big Horn Sheep off our wildlife list!!

The rest of the Parkway continued in much the same vein – beautiful mountains, icefields, lakes etc. Then it comes to a very abrupt end at Lake Louise. A real shock after all that wilderness to be confronted with highway junctions, train stations and rail tracks…