Dateline: Jasper, Alberta. Today we drove Highway 93, The Icefields Parkway. If there is a more spectacular 100+ mile drive in North America, I haven’t seen it. And, I’ve driven all 50 US states, all of the Canadian provinces except Newfoundland/Labrador, and one of the three territories (the Yukon).
You drive along in a north-south direction with immense glacier-topped mountains looming over the highway on both sides, as the road parallels a glacier-fed river whose water is a milky turquoise. The conifer forests start at the tree line and come right down to the road. Everything is enormous and a person in this landscape feels microscopic, until you focus on the wildflowers underfoot, which are often tiny and always interesting.
The drive from Lake Louise to Jasper isn’t long, maybe 150 miles, but it always seems longer. I think it seems long because the whole thing is just two lanes with lots of curves, grades and passes. We made the pull up Sunwapta Pass with no problems, one of the advantages of a relatively new tow vehicle. Sunwapta is a very long, very steep grade, the equal of some of those in Colorado.
This year the roads are in relatively good shape, particularly considering the bad winter weather they have to withstand this far north. On the other hand, being this far north in summer also means very long days and very short nights. The mid-winter days must be very short.
