There is no sleeping in for us on this trip. We got the car packed up and we were on the road by 8:30am. Jasper Alberta is our destination for the next couple of days. The drive was fine, lots of beautiful scenery but no wildlife yet.
The Canadian Rockies has three hot springs and since Miette Hot Springs was on our way, we decided to stop here. As we were driving through the parking lot, we noticed that were were people standing around and looking up. I thought it must be some type of bird. Boy weren’t we surprised when we saw that it was a bear up in a tree eating leaves. That is a first for us. He looked so cute sitting up there munching away.
Miette Hot Springs is the hottest hot springs in the Canadian Rockies. The water comes out of the spring at around 54°C and it is cooled down to anywhere between 35°C to 45°C. There are four pools at Miette … Two cold and two hot. I can tell you that one pool is definitely warmer than the other. I can not speak to the cold pools since I am sure I would have died of cardiac arrest had I gone in them. We spent about an hour enjoying the warmth of the water and the stunning scenery around us. Now the challenge was getting out of the water, grabbing our towels and getting to the change room. It was about 10°C but once you were out of the water, it felt much colder than that. I wish I would have gotten a picture of one of the lifeguards who had her winter hat and mittens on.
Shortly after leaving Miette Hot Springs, we came upon a mama black bear and her cub. We were busy trying to take some pictures and video of them when all of a sudden, a car came up behind us and honked their horn which scared them away. It was another hour of driving before we got to Jasper but we did see a mama elk with her baby and a coyote.
We are staying just outside of Jasper at the Becker’s Chalets ($210 CAD / night) which is right on the Athabasca River. This place is gorgeous. The property has many different styles of cabins with some of them even being very close to the river. There are lots of Adirondack chairs to sit and enjoy. From our cabin, you can hear the water rushing. We dropped off our stuff and headed back into Jasper where we had a fabulous dinner at Cassios Italian Restaurant.
Our final activity for today was with Jasper Planetarium to do their telescope / planetarium combo ($49 CAD / person). The first thing that struck us as odd was that the planetarium is in the middle of a parking lot at the Marmot Lodge. We were trying to figure out how we were going to see anything in downtown Jasper but we were amazed. The first forty minutes were spent inside the planetarium listening to Joel explain lots of space stuff. That is the best way I can describe it. We then headed outside where Steve showed us the three different telescopes they have. When it is a clear night, you get to use the telescopes. But since it was very cloudy tonight, Steve showed us images that were taken from those telescopes. It was amazing and my mind was blown many times. They said to us that we could come back tomorrow to give the telescopes a try if the sky was clear. We may have to take them up on that offer.
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