Back to Alberta....... and on to Saskatoon.

We were greeted by Markus in the morning as we readied to ride out of town, our last HH goodbye. We took the opportunity to ride highway # 29  to Chetwynd to complete the tour of "where we used to live" and went back to Dawson Creek on hwy.# 97. We then left BC by going to Grand Prairie, AB on hwy. # 2 (in BC) which changed to Alberta hwy. # 43. We stopped for a quick lunch there then headed south on hwy.# 40, along which I was hoping to see some game before reaching Grand Cache, AB. The animals obviously knew this because the ride that afternoon was completely devoid of everything but some small birds!

We stopped at the tourist bureau here and after checking the mileage to Hinton decided to ride on and stay there for the night. I knew I would want to stop for a lot of photos on the ride through Jasper and Banff National Parks, so this destination would accommodate this activity the next day. 

The sight of two mountain goats greeted us even before reaching Jasper National Park on Aug.18th.

      The stopped vehicles along the roadside are like flags indicating possible photo ops.

It began raining as we got to Jasper, but we just pulled over long enough for Gayle to pull on her rain pants (that she got from Jacqui Shaw earlier on our journey) and rode on. We did not stop in the town site and play tourist, but rode on until the rain stopped.

                     What a trooper! Becoming a real Adventure Rider on this trip!

    Cloud cover was in order for this part of the ride down the Icefields Parkway hwy.# 93

               Traffic of all shapes and sizes flows through the National Parks in Canada.

                         Rock formations and colours never cease to amaze out here.

Rustic cabins like this one were found in abundance, but I was surprised at the often small parcel
of land that came with it and of the limited furniture supplied for ones creature comforts once inside. A substantial "stove pipe", but absolutely no place for a stove! What's with that? This is Canada after all.

I did look for real estate listings for those interested, but came up short.! Perhaps if you contact Parks Canada directly you may be able to procure one to fit your property and budget!

On we rode stopping frequently (as I thought I would) to marvel at the scenery changing around every turn.

                                  Now here even the birds posed for "the touristas"

                        Athabaska River flowing almost milky in colour today.

                                     Did I mention that it was cloudy today?

The Athabaska Glacier (part of the Columbia Icefield) in the Winston Churchill Range in Jasper National Park is still in retreat! It amazed us both just how much since we were last here in 1984, with our children.

                              Sitting on a rock by a glacier ..........wasting time.

                           The Glacier is now way up over the hill behind Gayle!

      The climb to the face of the Glacier from the public parking lot begins at this little bridge.

   The walk down from the hill that separates the Glacier from the parking lot looks like this.

Who would not like to ride this highway? Amazingly beautiful!

    Pointing to Mount Coleman.      Altitude 10,262ft

   We saw this family of mountain sheep on the run into Rocky Mountain House from Saskatchewan River crossing on highway #11, for an overnight stay.

The next day it was on to the flats again and not as interesting photographically speaking as it has been of late.  No dash to the main highways for us though! We took these highways to Camrose to revisit Quilting from the Heart: 11 to 760 to 53 to 2A to 13 through small town and village Alberta. 

After lunch and ducking some rain showers we rode Highway 21 south again to visit overnight with Jacqui and Ron Shaw in Three Hills. We took the opportunity to walk "downtown" to eat out and returned to chat and watch a video that their daughter Danielle made, after completing some missionary training in Machakos, Kenya. (Daneille is now serving in Uganda) Who knew that the Lord's work could be so entertaining and fun? The video had us in stitches. Well done Dani and Nate.

The next morning saw us rise late enough to miss Jacqui (off to work) but early enough to say our last goodbye and thank you to Ron, who stayed home later to prepare for a service later in the morning at the hangar.

We rode hwy.# 21 farther south to Alberta hwy.# 9 which took us east to the Saskatchewan border then turned into Saskatchewan hwy.# 7 which linked up with # 14 just west of our destination for the night, Saskatoon. No photo stops today as we pretty much both just sat there waiting for Saskatoon to appear on the eastern horizon. We've seen it all before. We did, however, stop for a cool down Blizzard at DQ in Rosetown. :)