607. Rockies Roadtrip | Day 18 - Maligne Lake and Canyon

On our final day in Jasper, we visited Maligne Lake and Maligne Canyon. This was a pretty relaxing and slow-paced day..with our trip already coming to a close. We were the unluckiest with seeing wildlife on this trip, but we did see a black bear for (literally) a split second on the way to the lake. We started off our day with breakfast, at the same spot we went to every morning in Jasper:

I love these small town breakfast spots. Lots of interesting locals there lol. Most of who I found to be quite strange..though we also spotted a "diamond in the rough" ;)

In a previous post I mentioned we were staying in McBride which was a two hour drive each way into Jasper. We did some stops along the way which made the drive slightly less tedious. That morning we stopped at Rearguard Falls.


Chinook salmon are my favourite/the tastiest!

The current was so powerful. We were able to get quite close to the falls as you can see...it made me a bit nervous as the waves were incredibly strong, crashing against the rocks, but it was also an exhilarating feeling to stand there watching. I wasn't able to spot any salmon though.




This lake was a really unique shade of blue. I wasn't quite able to capture it on camera..


Then we arrived at Maligne Canyon!




At Maligne Lake. It was kind of a disappointment for me as unfortunately we weren't able to go to Spirit Island..which is the usual postcard image of the lake. We just walked around here a bit and went for ice cream lol.

I just realized I forgot to include our lunch and dinner from the Columbia Icefield day. So this was my lunch..& for dinner we went to a nice restaurant called Syrahs of Jasper.


This innocent little intermezzo quickly became the (hilarious) topic of the rest of our evening...and then the rest of the trip hahaha. It will have to remain as an inside joke so I won't reveal it here. ;)


This was the main which was a vegan "shepherds pie" which I didn't really like.



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601. Rockies Roadtrip | Day 16 - Arriving in Jasper

After Calgary, our next destination was Jasper. I think out of the entire trip, Jasper was the most scenic. The mountains and lakes were just incredible. We were lucky to get perfect weather every day so with the clear blue skies and beautiful blue lakes..every view was picture perfect. I didn't really edit the colouring on these photos (only adjusted the contrast a bit)..they really did look like this in real life!
The last time I came to the Rockies prior to this trip was when I was 8 years old. I don't remember much from that trip..but I always remembered Peyto Lake. It is my favourite lake of the Rockies:








During the time we were there (and I assume it still is)..Jasper was such a popular destination. We started booking our hotels and planning the trip I think 3 or 4 weeks before we arrived. For all our other cities we had booked our hotels to be right in the city centres. However, literally all the hotels and motels inside Jasper National Park were fully booked up on our days by the time we were checking for them. That had never happened to me before on any of my travels lol. The best we got was this motel in a small town called McBride...a TWO HOUR drive outside Jasper. So yes, each of the three days we were there we drove back and forth for 4 hours a day getting to Jasper and back to McBride lol. On the day we went to the icefields it was an even longer and more stressful drive..but more on that in my next post.

The motel was pretty good actually. We each got separate rooms here and at first I was so nervous it'd be a creepy old place and that I would be scared to stay in the room alone. But it wasn't bad at all. It was clean, brightly lit and (most importantly) Internet was good. I have to say it was actually a nice experience staying in McBride..something different for a change.

After we checked in, we wanted to go for dinner and was recommended a restaurant closeby. Actually probably the only real restaurant in McBride so we didn't have much of a choice. We were told we could walk there and so we did....along the highway in the middle of nowhere lol. We must've looked like the strangest hitchhikers. When we spotted the restaurant, we noticed it was across the road. So we had to go up and down a ditch on each side (which were deeper than what it looks like in this photo) to get there.

After the dinner, we walked back to the motel (up and down the ditches again) and by that time it was already pitch black. I was terrified we'd run into a bear or something.




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