June 25 Jasper
My goal today is to stop at the Athabasca glacier on the Ice Fields Parkway. I rode my bike from Baniff to Jasper about 50 years when there was considerably less tourists, certainly none from China at that time. The old hotel there had and all you could eat lunch that was popular with the bus tours groups then. Bus loads of old ladies didn’t eat much. Well peddling north, all the southbound bicyclists keep telling us you have to stop and have lunch there. Back then, bike touring, 50 to 100 miles a day, burned a lot of calories and you could eat anything and everything and still see all your ribs.
Well, they were not pleased having these biking gluttons stopping by for their all you can eat lunch. After we finished, the friends I was riding with, found some lawn space for a snooze to recover from our high calorie stupor, before we headed downhill towards Jasper.
That hotel has been replaced with a much larger building to accommodate the large number of tourists and tourist buses. No “all you can eat” leisurely lunch buffet. Now a couple restaurants and cafes move the bus loads of tourists quickly through.
Like my hairline the Athabasca Glacier has receded considerably over the last 50 years.
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| 1973 |
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| 2024 |
We head to our campground in Jasper for two days, before we head towards Dawson Creek, Mile 0 on the Alcan highway to Alaska. It's kind of the inverse of Mile 0, starting at Norfolk Virginia, heading south on the ICW (Intercoastal Waterway) to Florida.
At the Campground registration we are parked number 3 in a line of 4 silver Class B Ram ProMaster RV’s, all from different RV vendors.
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| Sunny evening for a change |
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| Campsite visitors |
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