Whistlers Campground

Day 6 (9 Sep) — Taking it easy at the campground

Whistlers Campground

Today we took it easy at the campground in Jasper. Whistlers Campground is also of a very high standard, fully equipped with hot showers. Staying in the tent all day was boring, so we headed into the town of Jasper. There are several tourist towns in the Canadian Rockies, but the famous ones are Banff and Jasper. Banff apparently gets lots of Japanese tourists, but Jasper doesn't have so many visitors and is a very calm town; I liked it a lot. For lunch we ordered a Papa Burger and Mozza Burger combo at the burger chain A&W. In Canada there seem to be more A&Ws than McDonald's. You don't see McDonald's much in country towns, whereas I felt there's an A&W in practically any town of 1,000 people.

Then we went to the visitor centre to get information about hiking from tomorrow, and there we learned a shocking fact.

On this trip, besides the Berg Lake Trail, we planned to do one more: the Skyline Trail, the most famous in Jasper National Park, said to have superb views because it's so high. But perhaps because of that very height, it was already closed by snow this year. We had neither the gear nor the knowledge for snowy mountains. We had no choice but to give up, and decided to skip hiking tomorrow and head for Edmonton.

After sightseeing in town, we came back to the campground. Our site had a table like the one in the photo above, so today we cooked outside. Cooking in the thick coniferous forest felt open and was great fun ♪ The frying pan we bought at MEC was not only light but non-stick! While we were happily cooking...

Mao's face suddenly froze and she cried, "What's that!" Looking, a huge brown creature was walking leisurely ahead of us. It seemed to be a wild elk. At first I thought it was a pet kept on the grounds, but that couldn't be. Looking closely, there were several more elk. The other guests looked at them and chatted, "It's a family", without seeming surprised at all.