Day 15 continued - Icefields Parkway down to Emerald Lake

When Natalie returned from her crazy sunrise viewing, she woke me up and we made our way down to breakfast at Smitty’s. 

From the sunrise shoot

By this time the clouds had started to come over and we worried that our day of driving on the Icefields Parkway might be cloudy. Boo :( 

As soon as we got onto the Icefields Parkway the scenery was awesome, even with a bit of cloud cover. We were hoping for the sun to come out but thankfully the view wasn’t completely covered by the low clouds we’d been getting during our stay at Jasper. 

Google maps said the journey to Emerald Lake would take around 4 hours, however we’ve learnt from previous scenic drives that it always takes loads longer due to stopping the car to look at the view or signposted attractions. I’d researched a few different places for us to stop off at but knew there would be lots more so we tried to be mindful of the time (and when I say ‘we’ I think I mean ‘me’ as most stops ended with me saying “ok then, that’s enough photos, lets get going”). That didn’t really last long though. 

The first planned stop was Athabasca Falls, we’d seen this on lots of lists and on Google images and it looked quite good, but when we got there it was so much better than we expected. It was an incredible waterfall, it was much more powerful and impressive than we thought it would be. I don’t think Natalie had been that bothered about seeing it, but she had to admit my research skills had again led us to a ‘wow’ place! When we walked around to the far side, we got quite close and the spray got us wet.

We had a little walk around to see it from different angles before jumping back in the car to continue. The next stop was Sunwapta Falls. Now, the main reason I wanted to go there was because I knew there was a gift shop that had a massive holographic bear which spoke and told jokes. We pulled in, made our way into the store and saw…the big plastic bear shaped screen but no projection, it wasn’t working. I was very sad. Natalie asked someone why it wasn’t on, he said it was temperamental. Stupid holographic bear. We decided to drive down to the Falls so that it wasn’t a wasted stop, again not really expecting very much, especially as Athabasca Falls had been so exciting. But again, Canada did not let us down and these falls were just as good. A different type of falls but still powerful and impressive.

Back in the car, we travelled a bit further down the road and saw a few cars parked at the side of the road, whenever this happens you assume someone has spotted some wildlife, you hope for a bear and pull up at the back of the queue. This time it just turned out to be a large Indian family who were messing around at a waterfall, so we quickly pulled back onto the road and left them to it. 

Around this time the clouds started to thin out, there was definitely patches of blue but they were to the side of us, still it gave us hope that we would get to see some of the Parkway in the sunshine. We continued to be amazed by the ever changing scenery, in awe of the different types of mountains that kept filling our windscreen. We wished it was a bit warmer so that we could take the roof off. 

We came to another waterfall that looked cool, it had a few layers and we noticed some people had climbed the short distance to the top so we thought we’d go and check it out. Near the bottom of the waterfall, sat staring into the bottom ‘pool’ was another Indian man, he looked so sad. He sat there for the whole time, looking like he was contemplating a life he wasn’t happy with; he was so still we wondered if he was still alive, we were pleased to see him move before we left. The waterfall was indeed cool, we took some silly photos and made our way back down to the car. The sun was definitely starting to come out now, I de-jumpered and we continued on the drive. 

There was more beauty along the way; I’ll let the photos do the talking for a bit, although they can not do the scenery justice. 

We eventually came to the Columbia Icefield which is the largest ice field outside of the antarctic. It feeds rivers that drain into the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic Ocean. It’s a big deal.

When the Icefields Parkway was first constructed 100 years ago, the Athabasca Glacier used to come all the way to the road. Global warming has seen the glacier, like all glaciers, retreating quickly and now the glacier is nowhere near the road.

We parked up and wandered up the giant glacial moraine (rock that the glacier has pushed) and as we did we saw markers indicating where the glacier used to be in the 1950s, the 1980s etc. It was pretty sad to think that in another couple of hundred years it might be almost gone.

As we’d done a glacier walk in Iceland last year, we didn’t feel the need to go and walk on the glacier, so we just looked at it from the tongue.

Note the people on the moraine just below the glacier and the cars in the car park

We were feeling pretty hungry and we weren’t sure how long it would be before we got to Emerald Lake so we thought we’d pop up to the Icefields Centre (opposite the glacier) to get some lunch. The place was heaving, it was as if all of the tourists in Canada had gone there on the same day; in fact it’s the only place where we’ve seen large crowds queuing, this is one place where pre-buying tickets to beat the queue would actually benefit you. The queue for the cafe was also huge, we considered just leaving lunch but then we noticed that the sandwich queue was none existent, so we picked up some food and walked straight through to pay - success! This day was shaping up to be a very good day, and it only got better when in the car park we spotted North Dakota - another one of the elusive states plates during the California trip, woo!

There was even more awesome scenery along the way, the guide books, internet and reviews weren’t lying when they said it was one of the best drives in the world. 

It got so hot and sunny that we decided to take the roof off the jeep and change into more holiday appropriate attire, so we both got our shorts, vests and caps on and continued to drive. 

Towards the end of the trip we came to Peyto Lake and Bow Lake. Peyto Lake is quite a famous lake, I think it appears in quite a lot of marketing products for Canada due to the funky shape and awesome colour. There was a short, but quite steep walk from the car park to the viewing platform and because it’s quite well known there was a fair few tourists there. There were some clouds when we got there so it wasn’t quite the colour you see in most photographs but every now and then the sun shone down and the brilliant turquoise blue came out. We stayed there for a bit, Natalie went off to get an optimum photograph location where no tourists would ruin the shot, when she returned (fifteen minutes later), we got back in the car and drove to Bow Lake.

Bow Lake was gorgeous, I liked it loads more than Peyto Lake - probably because we weren’t so high up and there was a gorgeous little meadow with flowers around it. We parked up again and went to look at it. As we didn’t have the roof on, I just ran down to the edge and looked for a little while, then left Natalie to explore a bit more. While I was waiting for her I sat on top of the Jeep and had a perfect view of everything around me, I should’ve been doing this all day!

The final leg from Bow Lake to Emerald Lake Lodge - our home for the next four days - didn’t take too long, we were surprised when the road veered right and we found ourselves on a highway which seemed to be taking us away from all of the beautiful huge mountains. That didn’t last long and before we knew it we were on a nice little road again. We stopped off briefly at ‘Natural Bridge’ which was a river that had a ‘bridge’ made out of rocks that hadn’t quite eroded at the top so you could still cross over (you weren’t supposed to, but people were doing. There were some fairly big gaps and I wondered how many people have died there. I think I would probably have died if I’d tried it).

A few minutes down the road from there was Emerald Lake, we had reached our destination. Somewhat confused as how to check in and get our stuff from the car to the cabin, Natalie ran in to ask and was told to go back to the car, drive to the lodge car park back down the road, dial 0 on the phone in the hut and a shuttle bus would come to collect us. 

We did as we were told and before long we were greeted by Robert who loaded our luggage onto the minibus, told us about the resort, let us know if we needed anything to call reception and he’d be happy to sort stuff out for us. Straight away we could tell why this resort was our most expensive place to stay, it’s a bit more upmarket but not pretentious. 

Emerald Lake is gorgeous, it’s another one of the bright turquoise lakes surrounded by trees and meadows. It’s impossible not to fall in love with the place. During check in everything sounded so lovely even I felt like I might cry with happiness! We got checked in, found our cabin, sat on our balcony with a lovely (slightly restricted by trees) view of the lake and took it all in for a few minutes. 

Then we got changed and headed down to Cilantro’s for a spot of dinner on the patio right next to the lake.

The BBQ menu was on tonight! Lovely. After dinner we had a quick walk around the grounds, we found the fire pit that’s lit every night and the club house which has a lovely hot tub in it. We were feeling quite tired so decided not to get in there tonight but to save it for tomorrow. We had a huge walk planned so we got ourselves back to the cabin, into the most comfortable bed in the world with cushions that squish in the most perfect way and went to sleep.