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20050611 McBride BC 42/75Cool, mostly cloudy, occasional light rain. Picture Link
Today didn't go by the plan, but that happens.
We got up late due to the time zone change yesterday. We scurried north on AB-93, the Icefields Parkway, looking at things and taking pictures.
We've been up this road before, so it's not a really big deal, but it does have some great scenery and some rock formations that show there must have been one hell of an upheaval to move these mountains the way it appears they were moved. (Note: run-on sentence #1)
We did the same sort of up-and-down as yesterday - up a ways next to a stream, over the top, down the stream, join another stream, up the stream, over the top. You get the picture.
We arrived at the Columbia Icefield. There's a big tour headquarters/restaurant/inn here. The idea is to educate the tourist about the Icefield, then get him into bus to a location above and to one side of the footy of Athabaska Glacier. Then he gets into an IceExplorer - a bus with huge tires and low gearing so that the 250hp Detroit Diesel has a max speed of 11mph but can cross the glacier without hurting it much. The ride goes to a turnaround area where everyone gets off and plays on the ice for a while. Then everyone reboards and returns to the headquarters.
Heather Reed looks to be about 22 and was our driver on the IceExplorer. She gave a good running discussion of the place and its features. Columbia Icefield occupies about 125 square miles of territory on a plateau between some 25 mountains. There are eight major glaciers that allow overflow ice to escape the icefield and some 30 small ones. Athabaska comprises two percent of the icefield. Athabaska is receding faster than the ice flows down from the icefield, some 10 meters per year. It's at about 7,000' altitude. Our bus was about half oriental tourists in a clump and half various anglos.
We've been on glaciers before, but this one was nice because you learned more from the lecture being given. It was worth the money and time.
We continued then to look at more places and take more pictures as we approached the town at the north end of the parkway - Jasper, Alberta. We intended to stay at the Jasper National Park's Whistler Campground. We stayed here once before and watched elk roaming through our campsite.
No such luck this time. All electrical-service sites were taken, despite what we were told by the Parks Canada representative at Lake Louise yesterday. Humph. Double humph.
We made the decision to go on and to hell with Jasper. We went into Jasper and fueled up, then headed west on the Yellowhead Highway toward Prince George as we had intended. We looked in Woodall's guide and found a campground (Beaverview Campsite) 100 miles down the road in a town named McBride, in BC. So we went there and secured a site for the night as the first patrons. Later two more trailers, five Class C rigs, and a truck-camper came in as well. It's a nice campground but only has 30amp electric and water service. On our way to McBride, we saw an eagle working on some road-kill and a black bear.
We took a walk to the riverside that forms the back of the campground - the Fraser River. Yup, the same river on which we were camped in Fort Langley several days ago, just much smaller. We are still in the Canadian Rockies and can see mountains with snow tops all around.
Now that we've skipped Jasper, we have extra time for Prince George. This is probably a good thing because we need to do laundry and the truck's maintenance has come due. If we have time, there's a railroad museum we can tour.
We did the photos for the day (143 pictures, cut down finally to 80-some). This finishes the log for the day. Dolores is watching a DVD on her computer and I'm going to finish my book if it takes me all night.
Oh, yes. We heard a rumor yesterday about some tropical storm threatening the Florida Panhandle. I suppose we'd better check into it at Prince George.
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