Jasper & Banff

I titled this post Jasper and Banff because that's the main part of it. Going through those parks was our second day after leaving Alaska. I included a couple of pictures previous to that, however.

Our first morning after leaving Skagway, we came across a few scattered bison, but then came up on this really big herd! They were on both sides of the road and Katherine counted about 41 total!

The bulls were so HUGE! Like most of the animals we saw along the side of the road, they were completely unconcerned with us.

We came across this lake in either Alberta or British Columbia - not sure which, but it was lovely. The water was so clear and blue!

Right next to the lake these two big horn sheep were just walking along the side of the road nibbling on what looked like gravel. Surely not. They were really cool looking and a lot bigger than I thought they'd be!

This was the second caribou we saw in Alberta. We didn't see any of the big bucks, but it was still cool to see a few!

We had to pull over to get this shot in Alberta. You could see so far and the hills and mountains were so beautiful!

This was a shot I grabbed just as we were driving into Jasper National Park in Alberta on our second day after leaving Alaska. The clouds were low and it was breathtaking.

This is a beautiful lake in Jasper National Park.

This was a picture from the first and longest hike we took called 5 Lakes. All 5 lakes were a beautiful but different shade of blue or green. It was amazing.

This was one of the first mountains I saw as we came into Jasper National Park. It was pretty amazing. It was also pretty cold there. They had just gotten 2 feet of snow the previous night up in the mountains.

This, I think, was called Horseshoe Lake or Horseshoe Bend It was a pretty short hike, but it had cliffs around the lake you could hike around. The color of the lake was amazing as was the general scenery.

For this picture I was on the lower side of the lake. I LOVE the color of the water in this one. The reflection is amazing and if you look closely, you can see Katherine up at the top of the cliff!

Katherine was on the higher end of the lake and took this picture of me on the lower end. You can see how clear the water is because you can see the rocks pretty deep below the surface.

Here we have one of the two big waterfalls we stopped to see. They were pretty impressive. I would not want to be in a boat watching that waterfall!

This huge whirlpool was just down from one of the waterfalls in Jasper. The rocks were awesome as was the power of that water!

This coyote just strolled right out in front of us on the road. My apologies that you have to see it through the bug encrusted windshield!

Many of these mountains had HUGE amounts of snow on them. I had never seen anything quite like it.

We wouldn't have seen this big horn sheep and her baby if there hadn't been a huge amount of people stopped along the side of the road. They really blend in. You may have look close to find them the first time.

Here I am in front of the glacier that's really close to the border between Jasper and Banff National Parks. I'm standing in front of a sign that says that people shouldn't cross the rope that's right behind me, but there were at least 30 people there who were behind the rope. Katherine and I were obedient to the signs.

I have a picture of us just about to hike up to the base of this glacier, but I liked this one of us going down better. It was quite the little hike and we got a little winded because of the elevation and it is steeper than it looks.

This shot is another one of my favorites from the trip. This is called Peyto Lake.

This is the other side of Peyto Lake in Banff. It's not as pretty a picture as the one above, but I had to include it to show the color of the water. It was incredible!

I don't really like this picture of myself, but I loved all these little baby trees and I had to share them on here!

This is the last picture I took as we were just about to leave Banff National Park. Beautiful country!

The end of this leg of our journey was in Moscow, ID at Susannah and Adam's place. We had already taken most of the bedding out of the back of the truck, but I still had us pose for this picture to show where we slept for 4 days. It was so nice not to have to set up a tent on the nights we camped, and it was also nice to have somewhere to stretch out on those last couple of nights that we switched off driving and drove through the night. This was an amazing trip!