Canada Trip - Part Five

We're leaving a week from Thursday for a trip to Seattle and I have to finish these up before we leave again. The upcoming trip is just for a weekend wedding, but still, I seriously need to wrap this up!

After waking up early almost every day thus far, on Wednesday, we decided to let the rain keep us in bed a little longer than normal. The plan was to spend the first part of the day hiking and pack a picnic lunch to enjoy whenever we felt like it. Based on it's Yelp & Trip Advisor reviews, we chose Patricia Street Deli for some sandwiches and Coco's Cafe for breakfast. My Yelp reviews reiterate their greatness.

Our next stop was a hike down the Maligne Canyon.

This canyon was much deeper than Johnston's, and the water level was insanely high. The hike itself wasn't too difficult, even with the ongoing drizzle.

Impressive tree

Chris: Golf courses design fake waterfalls made to look like that one!

My travel guides suggested we park at the Sixth Bridge, then hike up the canyon to First Bridge. Unfortunately, Sixth Bridge was closed (our theory was flooding) so we didn't do that. As I say, I'd recommend parking at Fifth or Sixth bridge and hiking up rather than down, like we did. Oh well, this is me at Fifth Bridge.

After the hike we drove further down the road to Maligne Lake. Along the way a park ranger approached us and asked, "Do you want to see a bear?" Um, ok!

It was even more awesome to be one of the first cars to spot this little baby bear.

"What's going on guys?"

"hmm, over there looks interesting! Let's cross that street."

After the excitement of the little bear, we finished our drive to check out Maligne Lake. This is the spot I'd definitely return to in nicer weather. It was tough to see the mountains with all the clouds. I started getting grumpy, so we did a quick walk around the gift shop, grabbed some warm drinks (mmm hot cocoa), and headed back into town.

Chris was pretty proud of this photo.

Pretty nice antlers on that guy.

On the way back to Jasper we stopped at the third of the Fairmont resorts, the Jasper Park Lodge. This one is much more rustic than the other two. Also, rather than one gigantic building, the lodge consists of a bunch of cabins and rooms scattered throughout their grounds.

And, as we were getting back into the car, we were completely suprised to be suddenly surrounded by a massive elk family.

Follow the leader.

How many can you spot? It was ridiculous, so many elks!

And, in typical Chris fashion, what'd he have for dinner that night? Elk steak.

After walking all the way down Jasper's Main Street and reading every single menu that we passed, we picked Villa Caruso for dinner. I wrote another Yelp review about the meal and I'm still having dreams about that goat cheese. And the calamari. It was fantastic.
Thus, we wrapped up the night with a stroll around downtown Jasper. Next stop? Back to Calgary.