As I mentioned in my last post, we thoroughly enjoyed traveling on Canada’s Icefields Parkway, between Banff and Jasper National Parks. In addition to the Columbia Icefield, we made a few other fun stops.
Peyto Lake
We visited Peyto Lake right after the rigmarole of waking up at 5am in order to visit Moraine Lake, and were amazed to discover that, despite the lack of major crowds and easy parking, Peyto Lake was just as brilliantly blue as Moraine Lake! We were aided a little bit in the fact that it had started raining when we stopped, so the place had cleared out a bit, and A and I had to deal with on and off rain during our walk up to the lake viewpoint.
C was a bit tired (5am wakeup!), and the little boys were a bit lazy, so they stayed in the car while A and I climbed a fairly short (only 1.2km round trip) path to the main Peyto Lakes viewpoint.
We got our first glimpse of Peyto Lake here, with big snow-capped mountains in the background. Despite the rain, there were a fair number of other people at this viewpoint. But no worries, my obsessive internet trip-planning research led us to carry on to another, higher and less-frequented viewpoint.
We trudged through woods and some mud and rain, but eventually reached the new spectacular viewpoint, which we had to ourselves.
After a few minutes enjoying the view in the rain, we headed back to the car, a total round-trip of about 2.6km.
Mistaya Canyon
The Mistaya river carved crazy looking curvy walls into a canyon as it flows through the Icefields Parkway. This was just a short walk, but we enjoyed exploring for a few minutes.
Sunwapta Falls
We spent two nights on the Icefields Parkway, since there was so much to do and see. There are VERY few places to stay along the entire stretch, so I was happy to get a place for us to stay at Sunwapta Falls Rocky Mountain Lodge. It is located about 110 miles north of Lake Louise, and just 34 miles from Jasper, at the north end of the Icefields Parkway. We had a cute cabin-type room for the five of us, and enjoyed staying there. The only problem was that there wasn’t a lot of food available anywhere closer than Jasper, besides in their restaurant. And as supply and demand, plus peak tourist season would dictate, the prices were ridiculously high!! Seriously. I bought some packages of ramen noodles and made everyone eat those a few times during our stay.
On the plus side, our place was walking distance to Sunwapta Falls, another nice stop along the Icefields Parkway.
Believe it or not, we still haven’t covered everything we did on the Icefields Parkway! Watch for our next blog post (or two) for more adventures on the Parkway.
