Today we left Fairmont Hot Springs to head to Jasper, B.C, where we will be staying at the Wabasso Campgrounds. These campgrounds are about a 15-20 minute drive from Jasper.
It was quite an eventful drive. We drove by the Athabasca Glacier. We had visited this glacier several years ago on our trip to Banff and during that tour we were able to walk on part of it and fill water bottles with fresh glacier water. Today it was just a drive by and a quick stop for some photos.
We did have a bit of a scare before getting to the glacier. When we slowed down with our window open at the checkpoint to enter the Icefields Parkway, we heard a terrible screeching sound. It was such a bad sound to hear, and to top it off, we were far away from help if something was wrong. The sound reminded me of when I had a rock stuck in one of my breaks several years ago. Mike had his thermal gun and none of the brakes were hot and we couldn’t see any issues, so we crossed our fingers and toes and kept driving, hoping it would fix itself. About a mile or so down later, the sound stopped. Phew.
Mike was a superstar driving down the big, really steep mountains on the way to Jasper. It’s hard enough to drive them but to do it with a trailer – on your first trip pulling a trailer, he did great.
We saw a nice variety of wildlife including two bears, some mountain goats, and some big horn sheep.
The campground/site was pretty nice, despite the rain. This is our first “boondocking” experience. No water/power. The dump station wasn’t too far away or complicated to get to, and there were water fill stations and clean bathrooms if needed. We did great for our first time! We even got showers and still had water and grey/black tank space left!
Dinner tonight was garlic lemongrass chicken meatball and pasta soup with peas. After dinner we went into Jasper and got some ice cream. On the way we saw an interesting wooden camper from Idaho parked in town. Driving back to the Airstream from our ice cream trip, we saw an elk.
