On The Road with Chris: Rockin' Rockies

From Calgary we drove into the Canadian Rockies. The Canadian Rockies encompass the Banff and Jasper National Parks. First we stopped in Banff and walked along the Bow River. Banff was really interesting. I liked the different country flags in front of the Clock Tower Mall on their main street. I liked our walk along the river and there was a pretty bridge.

Traveling from Banff along the highway through the Rockies was scenic. Animals are always in danger near the highways and there are lots of

animals in the Rockies. So the parks people decided to build crossings just for animals. These are large bridges crossing the highway that are designed to look like the land around them. The highways are fenced so that the only way the animals can cross the road is by the bridges. These bridges are used by 11 species of larger animals including Moose, Grizzly Bears, Elk and Deer. Currently there are 2 bridges in Banff National Park and since they began monitoring in 1996, there have been 183,000 crossings.

Next we stopped for lunch at Lake Louise. The lake was mostly frozen and there was lots of snow but the sun was out and it was pretty. I looked in

the viewing telescope and saw the glaciers across the lake.

We left the lake quickly because we wanted to make it to the glacier that we could go out on. We drove the Ice Fields Parkway and didn’t stop along the way because we wanted to get there. Not stopping was ok because it was snowing most of the way up there. What we did see from the road was beautiful.

We made to the Columbia Ice Field and took a bus up so far and then got on a snow coach to go up on to the Athabasca glacier.

There 23 snow coaches made and 22 were at this glacier. The other one is owned by the US government and is at the bottom of the world in Antarctica. Part of the route to the glacier is a steep downhill then up hill on the ice.

When we stopped we went out and looked around. It reminded me of one of the Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back. The mountains reminded me when a snow speeder went around a corner and you see some rock just like by the glacier.