Drive to Jasper and Jasper

Friday-Saturday 8/23-24

Easy drive to Valemount, British Columbia, 75 miles west of Jasper. We had been to this campground previously so planned to do laundry, dump, get propane, etc. We know the campgrounds in Jasper have no services.   

Sunday 8/25

Today we drove to Jasper and planned to stop at Wapiti Campground. The sign said Full. This phased Tom but not me. The ranger confirmed they were full but gave us a map to the overflow area to stay the night. Told us to come back tomorrow at 8 AM to get a first-come, first-serve site. We essentially had to drive the entire campground to turn around. As we were driving out she waved us down and said someone had canceled. We paid for our site, had to drive several miles outside the park before we found a turnaround spot again.

We went to our site, not very level but, surprisingly, we had 30a electric. Totally unexpected. We did notice the sites further own were better so we talked to a rig there, found out they were leaving the next day. The couple were from Edmonton and we hit it off, talked for several hours and enjoyed each other. We hope our paths will cross again. Drove back to the ranger station and tried to “reserve” that site. No go had to show up at 8 AM the next day.

We had a surprise tonight. An Elk heard showed up in the playground/picnic area across from us. The Ranger was as a program was scheduled. Another ranger showed up to help protect the Elk. The kids were told to leave the campground, the picnickers had to give up on their picnic. One left behind some items that the Elk promptly ate. Elk hung around for 1-2 hours. 

Keeping an eye on things, maybe 20' from us

He gathered his harem and they all left

George watching the excitement

Monday 8/26

Next day we showed up at 8 AM and joined a line of 5 people looking for a site. She recognized me, opened the window and asked if we had a site number. Told her 21 and the gal next to me wanted our site 18. She made a note to hold those 2 sites, took care of everyone ahead of us. The gal who wanted our site and I walked up to the window together. Everything worked out fine. We both ended up with sites and were happy. 

This park is very unusual, if you cancel early you can get a refund with no extra charges. Never heard of that before. Knowing this, we signed up for 8 nights. We don't like traveling on weekends and this is Labour Day weekend in CA. We are in an especially in high tourist areas and our next stop will be Banff. Another high tourist area. 
 

We didn’t do much our first day in camp, kept raining on and off. The next day we moved to our new site, much better and this site had 50a electricity, a rare find. The first-come, first-serve sites all have electricity. The reservable sites have no amenities. OK, they are in the woods and have big sites. We are in essentially a parking lot and a bit cozy. No one is around during the day, everyone comes in at supper, eats, sleeps leaves again.

One additional benefit for Tom, he had satellite service for the first time in months. We have had no TV most of the time in BC and AK. He suffered withdrawal pains.

Tuesday 8/26 

Headed North from Jasper, beautiful valley drives with a few side roads to explore. We also checked out the overflow parking that we almost ended up at for one night. Not bad. Wide-open, great views, level sites. Just no hookups.

As usual, this was a drive of visual beauty.

The overflow campground

Bald Eagle just hanging out

Punch Bowl Falls, looking down from the top, 3 punch bowls

Wednesday 8/27

Heavy fog this morning. Great day to clean the inside windows. I was all set up to clean and noticed the fog was lifting. Cancel window cleaning, off we go exploring.

Today we headed south toward Banff. We like to travel from a base camp 50-75 miles in any direction. We also like to go to our furthest point first and work our way back. We didn’t do that because we could see the fog further down the valley.

All the brown trees you see is damage from Pine Bark Beetles, pure devestation.

There are 2 roads south, the main Icefields Parkway(93) and a side road that parallels 93 called 93a. We took 93a but it was foggy, we hoped we would drive out of it and we did. There are several side roads to take so we took them and these were well worth it.

Each day the scenery is amazing.

Fog down the rod

After we took the side roads we started heading south again but the fog didn't lift so when 93a intersected with 93 we headed back to camp. The weather was clear north of amp was clear so did some additional drives.

8/28

Today south had clear weather so we headed south again. We stopped along the way as we saw some weather south of us and thought we might need to turn around again. We made it as far as Columbia Glacier, our planned turnaround point.

Athabasca Falls

8/29-9/1

We just puttered around camp, very cloudy with some rain. Went food shopping, did some research on Banff, our next stop. We had a reservation in Banff, a much more popular park than Jasper. I was reviewing the reservation and saw it was for a tent, no big deal. Many times all the sites are pretty much the same size. The CSR never asked what size rig we had.

I decided to check with Banff Reservation and discovered our site was too small for us. After many random calls to different people, changes in the reservation several times(each time a charge) we had a spot in a different campground. I then asked for a credit for the “change” fees. I explained to the CSR the history of my morning and she called someone in charge of refunds. She then told me I would hear from them but if I didn’t call again and she gave me my reservation number for the refund. Said it would be 5-10 days.

We lucked out. The supervisor heard our CSR call and realized we had a big mess with our reservation. The supervisor called back 2 hours later and gave us a full refund for our fees since it was their error. Yeh!!! The supervisor actually listened to the recordings of all our conversations with reservations! Wow!