Day 70, Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Turns out I couldn’t even get a good night’s sleep last night because I simply lay in bed pissed off at myself for having squandered so much money on a crappy motel. I realize there wasn’t any option in the matter, but I’m still pissed. $140 is three whole days of budget squandered on one SPARSE hotel. And I really mean sparse. The hot tub wasn’t working, the pool was undesirable, and the “continental breakfast” was toast, juice, butter, and bananas. All in all pretty crappy for $140 USD.
I left the hotel today and headed over to Yoho National Park in BC to camp at Kicking Horse Pass. Thankfully the weather today was much better than yesterday. It was still rainy in bouts but in general it was nice. After setting up camp, I’d initially planned to go for a hike just up the street from my campsite, but I changed my plans, due to sporadic rain, and decided to take a scenic drive up to Jasper National Park in Alberta to see the Columbia Ice Field. Turns out that was a great choice. The drive is stunning. The mountains of Banff and Jasper are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The top portions of the mountains are ragged, snow covered, and stark like the Rockies down in the US. The lower portions off the mountains are lush, moist and green like the Smoky Mountains I’m used to out East. Combine those two stunning characteristics with the fact these mountains dwarf most of the rocky mountains I’ve seen so far and you’re coming close to an unjustly weak description of these mountains. They’re amazing. They’re also the only place I’ve ever seen *healthy* glaciers up close. I was a bit disappointed by the glaciers I saw in Glacier because they all appeared to be in their final death throws. I saw large glaciers at Mount Rainier, but those were several miles removed. These are definitely large and seemingly “just over there”.