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!

Amazing Day!

Today was an awesome day. It was our last full day in Skagway since we're leaving Tuesday morning to go back through Canada and hopefully be in Idaho by Thursday afternoon.

I decided to go out with a bang. Julie had mentioned a helicopter tour which we'd have to pay for at a discounted price. I decided it was worth it and set out on my own for this adventure.

I was all decked out and ready to go when Katherine and Julie showed up to wish me good luck. She got this quick picture of me.

I got this one of them from inside the helicopter as we were about to take off.

I had never been in a helicopter before and it was very cool. The scenery was amazing as well, though it may be hard to tell from this photo.

I got this cool shot of Meade Glacier from the helicopter though. We landed on it shortly after I took this.

This is a view of some of the glacier once we landed.They had us wait by this flag till the helicopter took off to take some other people back to town.

Part of our gear were these cool ice boots that went over our shoes. They were very helpful.

This crevasse was one of the first ones we saw. It was pretty deep.

I loved seeing the streams of water that were coming down from the glacier as well.

This is looking up the glacier. We actually saw a black bear walking on the ice, but I don't think you can see it in this picture. It was half a mile from us, but we could see it pretty well.

I loved this one because of how deep blue the color was inside the glacier.

Here's another stream of water. This particular glacier is 30 miles long, 1 1/2 miles wide at the widest, and up to 1000 feet thick. The part where we were walking around was about 400 feet thick.

Our tour guide was kind enough to get this shot of me. They gave us these walking stick things that were like ski poles and those were also very helpful to have another point of balance.

Another scenic glacier shot.

More of that beautiful blue color on the interior.

We got to drink the water from this little stream. It was very cold, but very good.

I got this photo to show the size of our tour group. We had two guides - they're the ones not in orange helping people across the little stream.

I had a guy in my helicopter take this shot of me on our way back to Skagway. I loved this tour!

Not long after I returned, we were off on another adventure. We piled on a few layers of clothes, collected some bikes and helmets and set out!

We drove up to the US/Canada border to begin. Before we started biking, we found some snow and and to have some fun with it. Jared got this great shot of Katherine throwing a snowball . . .

. . .at my head! I had my bike helmet on, so I let Julie and Katherine use my head for target practice for a little bit. They did not hit my head, but did hit various other spots.

One side of this pillar says United States and the other says Canada. It's right at the border. Jared and Julie made it look like she was eating it.

Here we are posing on the Canada side.

We mounted up and were ready to take on "the pass." We started out up at 3000+ feet and rode down to sea level in Skagway- about 12 miles.

The scenery was spectacular of course.

Here we are at our first stop, happy and glad for the many layers we were wearing.

This is us climbing one of the few hills we had to go up. It was mostly downhill and was a lot of fun.

Jared and Heidi were in Julie's X-terra and they got tons of pictures of us. I love this one of Katherine. Jared had gotten way ahead of us and was laying on the ground for this one.

More awesome scenery!

Next short pit/scenery stop.

Crossing this bridge was pretty cool.

I really liked this shot that Heidi got in the side mirror on the passenger side.

Here we are at US customs on bikes. I thought that was kind of funny.

I love this video Heidi shot because it shows how fast we were going for a lot of the ride. I think we got up to at least 35 mph on a lot of it.

We rewarded ourselves with a trip to the Dredge to Heidi's restaurant for some corn fritters.

These things are not super healthy, but they are REALLY good!

I can't remember what started this, but Heidi threw a bunch of water on Jared and it looked like he peed his pants.

We were amused as Katherine was shedding some of her layers afterward to see these hilarious long john bottoms she had found at some store. Thrift store, I believe.

I'm not sure how we talked her in to letting us take this picture, but I'm sure glad she did.

I picked up a few last minute things in Skagway and just walked around for a bit. We found this Sarah Palin store so I got my picture by her cutout.

I was glad to finally get a picture of this store whose front is covered in driftwood I think it looks really cool.

Skagway is a major port for Alaskan cruises and I finally got some shots out along the docks.

The whole harbor over here is very scenic.

These two ships were huge and very nice .

There were a lot of interesting things in Skagway - this was definitely one of them. Julie saw them ride this in a parade and she said the girl made it look really easy. Impressive!

Our last stop this evening was at a restaurant called the Fish Co. It was nice to sit and visit and enjoy some food. I'll miss being in Skagway with Julie and lots of her fun friends - and Jared of course!