Canada Day 11 (3) - Of Lakes and Beavers

On the way back from Maligne Lake, we come across Medicine Lake. We stop there for a quick photo stop. During the drive, we also notice that a large part of the surrounding forest is pretty dead. As we later find out, this is partly due to the wildfires that ravaged here, and partly due to a bark beetle which is responsible for a large-scale tree death.

Suddenly, we get stuck in traffic. No, not really stuck, there are just a lot of cars on the side of the road, and people are getting out of their vehicles and pointing excitedly up into the forest. This can only mean that there must be something to see there. To find out what it could be, I also get out of the car to get a better look. I look in the direction that everyone is pointing, but I can't see anything. So I ask the young man next to me what the people are so excited about. Well, guess what? A bear! Now I look closely and I finally see the bear too! He is so far away that he is hardly visible, and there is hardly anything to see in the photos, but hey, my first bear! :D

We continue happily to Jasper Skytram, which we would like to take up to Mount Whistler. When we arrive, we are quite surprised to see that there is hardly anything going on in the parking lot, and we are actually happy about that until we realize that there must be a reason for it. And we were right, because due to the wind, the Skytram was not operating today. This was already the third gondola that we couldn't ride. Unbelievable, it seems like the vacation consisted of a lot of things that I would like to do, but can't do...a little frustrated, we then drove towards Jasper and hoped to be able to change money there. Unfortunately, the bank was not able to do it for some reason, and we didn't want to change at the hotel there because of the bad exchange rate. So we had to wait. Luckily, credit cards are accepted everywhere here ;)

Somehow, neither of us felt like doing much right now, and since it was quite a distance to Hinton anyway, we decided to drive back. We still had some shopping to do and needed to get something to eat. Along the way, there were of course many great photo opportunities, this time in good weather!

We didn't arrive in Hinton until around 7:30 p.m. and actually just wanted to take a shower and then go to bed. We were really exhausted. However, when we arrived, our host Amanda engaged us in a conversation and recommended that we go to the Beaver Boardwalk, which was nearby. Because at dusk, the beavers come out there and the chances of seeing them are good. We followed her advice and went there despite our tiredness. The drive was really short, only 10 minutes. The Beaver Boardwalk is a small swamp area that is built with boardwalks that you can walk on. Luckily, we followed her advice because we actually saw beavers! We have seen so many amazing animals here. The trip was really worth it. When we returned to our host family, they offered us pizza that they had just ordered. They were really nice, but we had to decline because we were full and just wanted to sleep. Plus, we would have felt guilty eating their food. So we chatted for a while, thanked them for the great tip and the offer of food, and went to sleep.

Tomorrow, we unfortunately had to leave the super hospitable family behind, because our journey would take us on one of the most beautiful roads in Canada: the Icefields Parkway!