It is a relatively short drive from Banff National Park into Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies, but we were planning on pulling off at a lot of scenic areas. We pulled out of the Banff campground at 9:00 and headed up Canada 1, past some of the sights we had already visited while in Banff and soon were stopping for photo ops. There were some low clouds hanging over the peaks of the mountains, but, as we stopped and waited for a while, they began breaking up and we started getting the shots we really wanted.
There were tour buses filled with European tourists going along the same route and, when we stopped along side one, there were nearly as many pictures taken of our two rigs as there were of the mountains. We were getting questions about how they were to drive and how we were able to tow the cars “4 wheels down”, something I guess they had not seen before.
After a while, the clouds were more reluctant to part for us, and eventually, we started getting rain and wet roads. One of our goals was to stop at the Columbia Ice Fields and take the tour. We had already purchased the tickets in Banff and it was perfect for us to stop there on the way to Jasper. However, when we got there, it was snowing. Big, wet flakes of snow. We decided to take our chances on coming back down from Jasper the next day and hoping the weather would have cleared, at least a little. We were also hoping the road would stay clear enough for us for us to get to Jasper without further problems. It did.
The campground we are staying at has a lot of trees but Geoff was able to get the manual TV dish set up and connected to the satellite well enough to be able to see the Daily Show, which had been off the air for 2 weeks. Woo-hoo! A good end to the day.
