A weekend in Jasper

It's been a tough slog for Lee the last while. He didn't get much of a summer vacation, and the fall has been crazy busy. So when I suggested that we all head for the hills the last weekend of October, he jumped on that bandwagon in a hurry.

Jasper, Alberta, is a favourite getaway spot for our family. We like to camp there, and when it's too cold for camping, we have a favourite hotel (with kitchenette) and loft bedroom with three single beds for our girls. These days, it's the shoulder season in Jasper -- that time between summer tourism and skiing -- so the town was probably the quietest I've ever seen it. Perfect for a lazy weekend away in the mountains. The five of us packed as little as possible and piled into our tiny putt-putt car for the four hour trip.

I love these pictures with mountains both below and above the clouds...

Lots of wapiti with big racks near the highway 

(photographed from the safety of a slow moving vehicle).

They grow new antlers in the spring.

I had never thought about the difficulties of backyard composting in Bear Country,

but I'm happy to see that the town of Jasper came up with a solution...

Saturday morning's view from our room.

Lee and I decided to take the Wilderness trail around the edge of Jasper.

The only wildlife we met were a few hawks and our girls, 

who took a long detour on their way to a downtown coffee shoppe.

"Fancy meeting you here," they said, and so did we.

A huge tree along our path...

older than the town of Jasper, by the looks of those rings.

The temperature was just above freezing, 

according to this little stream...

For a lot of the trail, we were looking across town roof tops,

but there was a lovely, quiet walk back into the hills, too.

Another creek, with really cool icicles on some of the deadfall...

Our girls headed to the coffee shoppe and left us to finish the trail on our own.

This abandoned (filled in) Grand Trunk railway tunnel 

is almost a hundred years old. The tracks below cross over it.

After all that fresh air, everyone went to bed and 

left me alone that evening to tend the fire.

I didn't mind too much.

The roads on the way home were pretty treacherous for the last hour,

but other than that, it was a great, relaxing weekend. We're so

blessed to have Jasper four hours from our doorstep!