Day in Jasper

So disappointingly, no pictures today!  Our internet at our chalet is going VERY slow tonight and I just can't get them to upload.  It will have to wait for a dump in Canmore!

No grizzly bear sightings from our deck last night!  Darn!

We were booked on a 9:15am boat cruise on Maligne Lake for this morning but when the weather looked bad yesterday and I went to check on whether the boat was covered, I saw that they had changed the opening day to June 10th!  Oddly, they hadn't contacted us at all to let us know our boat trip was cancelled.  I was confused last night and ended up using social media to contact them because all of their numbers were closed at that point.  I heard back early this morning from them to say yes, it is not running because there is still ice on the lake.  Nice of them to let us know!  Sigh.

So change of plans for the day a bit.  It actually was ok.  We would have had to leave really early this morning to make it in time and honestly we needed a quiet morning.  We have literally not stopped since we got here.  We generally, get back to our room at 7pm, get all of our stuff ready for the next day, get kids to bed, write in journal/blog, crash.  So I was ok with a quiet morning.

The day turned out to be basically the same as the last few weather wise.  Calling for rain all day but really only rained maybe 10% of the time.  The rest of the time just a bit cloudy but the weather really didn't impact our day much (except for impacting the views a bit).

So we had some breakfast at our cabin and left around 9:30ish.  We walked around our property for a bit to explore.  There were several elk around.  Man, are they big!  The kids played in the playground with the best views you can imagine!  Then we were off for a hike.

We did the Maligne Canyon hike.  This is a huge canyon/gorge which has been carved out of the rocks by the rushing water.  It was so cool!  We saw a birds nest with some baby birds way down in the canyon.  The whole walk took a bit over an hour.  We grabbed a snack and then we decided that even though we couldn't do the cruise, that we would still drive out to Maligne Lake which was about an hour away.  It was a beautiful drive and we drove super slow looking for grizzly bears.  No bears, but we saw several elk, several deer and a goat!  I had my camera at the ready in case of a bear but no luck.  We got to the lake and walked to where the views were.  We were ready for lunch so we had a great lunch on the patio.  Once we were done our lunch, the kids saw some kids having a snowball fight so they went down there to throw snowballs.  And Trev and I had a quiet drink on the patio with amazing views.  Heaven!  We then did a bit of a walk around the lake before deciding we better head back into town so we had time for the Jasper Sky Tram!

On the way back, we drove slow again but still no bears!

We got to the Jasper Sky Tram and took it to the top of the mountain!  When we got there we had to take an alternate route to the ticket booth because there was a female elk which was right at the stairs.  There were 3 staff members with what I would assume are elk sticks?  They were large poles with red streamers at the end of it.  They were trying to corral the elk!  It was interesting to watch while we waited for our tram!

It was awesome at the top!  Lots of rain in the distance but we didn't get wet!  We spent an hour at the top. The kids made some cairns.  Trev did some videoing.  We posed for some pictures with the tripod.  It was very relaxing and fun!

When we went back down we decided to go for a walk in Jasper town.  We truly haven't done any browsing/shopping at all this trip except for a few gift shops as we've exited different attractions.  So we just walked up and down a couple of the main streets popping into the shops.  We bought Owen a hat that he loved on the Vancouver Ferry (while he wasn't looking) and were going to save it for his birthday except that we keep seeing it everywhere we go and he so desperately wants it and I'm tired of saying no.  So we gave it to him this morning.  We got a nice hat for Joel today too.  The kids also bought pocket knives with their names on them at the Jasper Sky Train.  And we bought a black bear Christmas Decoration yesterday in Lake Louise.  That's the extent of our shopping.  After about 40 minutes of browsing in Jasper we were done, but we weren't quite ready for supper eyt.  We decided what we really wanted was to see a grizzly bear!  The two groups who we were with on the skytram both had seen grizzly bears today.  One group saw it on the Maligne Lake road that we drove today too.  The other said they saw one on the road to Pyramid Lake.  So off we went for a drive to Pyramid Lake!  We took a scenic tour all round the back roads and saw lots of elk and deer again, but no bears (despite many, many signs warning that it is a bear area!).  I think we are out of luck!

We had some dinner.  Joel has been desperate for a steak.  A couple of days ago he said:  "Mommy just think about a steak for a minute.  Hold on!  Don't think about the price.   Just think about how juicy a steak would be.  With a giant baked potato!"  So tonight he got his steak!

Then we drove very slowly back to our cabin to try to see a bear.  No bear.  Trev and I put Anna to bed in our room so that we could sit out in the main living room area on the pull out couch after the kids were asleep to hopefully see a bear.  But it's pitch black out now and no bear.  :(

To top off a great day, Owen lost his tooth tonight.  It's been loose for a few days but Owen decided that he wanted the tooth fairy to come on his birthday so worked hard to get it out tonight!

All in all a great day!