Saturday 2 August 2008

Jasper Animals

It is a four day long weekend this weekend and we're back in Jasper. The drive up along the Icefields Parkway was marred by torrential rain and it wasn't much better in Jasper when we arrived. The skies may be a bit grey but we're otherwise excited to be back.
Having covered much of the area close to Jasper and to the west,we drove out east toward Hinton to explore something new. The main road twists through the lake riddled valley which makes for a nice scenic drive in itself. About half an hour from Jasper, we turned up the Miette road that is the acess for Miette Hot Springs. Everything was lush and green in the valley.

We did see a black bear at one of the campsites along the way. What a surprise! We hardly ever see black bears during our travels in Western Canada!
Anyway, this healthy young bear was going about his business stripping the forest of berries. He was right at the entrance to the Pocahontas campground but that didn't seem to deter him.
We saw a couple of deer toward the end of the day, but I think the traffic volume due to the long weekend probably scared most of them off.
Maybe we'll get lucky with better weather tomorrow.