Well we arrived safely at Clearwater after the horrendous mountainous trip and sadly, almost the first thing we heard, was that the road we had just travelled on had just been closed, due to someone hitting a Deer and going over the edge of the road and crashing down into the valley below.

So very sad and something like this reminds you that you never know just what is waiting around the corner in life.

But to continue with the journey to Clearwater;

The RV site at Clearwater was, once again, very good, with views over Dutch Lake, which we proceeded to explore.

The following day, in a canoe that we hired, we decided to explore the lake and see if we could see its wildlife.

At first the lake was quite calm, but it soon turned into a ‘White Water’ adventure (Honest), when the numerous Turtles in the lake started churning up the water, as they tried to escape from us.

Still, it was our fault, because we approached too close to them in the canoe, however, we managed to stay upright and didn’t collapse the canoe!!!

The scenery around Clearwater was once again, dramatic and huge waterfalls abounded off nearly every mountain and especially up in the Wells Gray Provincial Park, which we explored the following day.

Ok, all too soon our few days here were done and it was time to move on, so we hitched up the car to the RV and set off to our next stopping point, which was at Jasper.

Jasper, although only a couple of hundred miles away, is in Alberta, so it is in another hour time zone, making it 7 hours behind the UK and 2 hours behind Florida.

Jasper National Park, is supposed to be a spectacular wildlife area, especially for Bears, but despite warning signs all over, we hadn’t seen any Bears yet on our travels, so we were a bit sceptical.

However, just after we drove passed the park gates, we saw a young Bear at the side of the road, trying to cross, unfortunately, as you can see in the one photo below, we didn’t see it until we had almost passed it, so didn’t manage to get many good pictures.

But we needn’t have worried, as just a bit further down the road, we saw Big Horn Sheep, Mountain Goats and Elk and that was just in the first day’s drive through the National Park, on our way to stay at the Hinton/Jasper RV park, just outside the gates.

The next day saw us up and off to visit the Columbian Icefield – no, not in South America, don’t be silly!!! – this was in the Jasper National Park!

You can see it here, behind us, in the picture below.

At the Icefield, we boarded a huge great Icefield ‘Bus’ and we were driven up onto the Icefield and onto the Athabasca Glacier and wow, what an experience that was, even the ‘Bus’ ride was exciting!

We managed to fill an empty water bottle from the glacial running water, for a freezing cold drink and our idiot Driver/Hunter was the only person on the whole of the Icefield, who was dressed in shorts and tee-shirt – brrrr!

But to be fair, even though we were stood on a whopping great sheet of ice, it wasn’t really cold, just a bit of a chilly wind, which is probably why there was water running down hundreds of channels in the ice, as the glacier melted in the summer warmth.

On the way back to the RV, we called to see the Sky-Walk, a Glass ‘Bridge’ that sticks out over a 1000foot drop over the runoff water from the Glacier.

Ok, back to the RV for a Hot Toddy (Coffee and Whiskey for the uninitiated!), then off the following day to explore Jasper some more and for a Boat trip down on the Maligne Lake, which is a huge lake about 9 or 10 miles long and about a 1000 ft deep, with beautiful blue waters and home to ‘Spirit island’, which features in many pictures and Calendars of the Rockies.

It is also still of spiritual significance to the First Nation people, who lived here in the past and thankfully are still around today.

Whilst here, as well as the animals we have mentioned earlier, all of which we saw several times, we even ended up seeing, eventually, our first full size Black Bear – yippee!

Just joking – ha ha – This is the real one and it was pretty Big!

We also saw our first Beaver Lodge and Dam here and although we didn’t see the Beavers, it was amazing to see the size of some of the logs they had dragged around to build their Dam wall.

Once again, all too soon, our time here was up and it was hitch and off again.

More soon.