Alan is making me write the blog tonight because he said nothing exciting happened today. I'm not sure about that, but if he does feel like making a comment, it will be in red. It must be true because I can't remember anything we did today. I drove 430 kilometres. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
So, we survived our night in the hotel. It really is spooky being the only guests in a hotel, when you are on the first floor and a couple of staff are staying on the fourth floor. We never knew whether they locked the front door last night and, really, we think it was better not knowing. At least we weren't disturbed by noisy neighbours. There were, however, quite a few strange noises coming from the hallway outside our room at various times during the night. Needless to say that we didn't go out there to investigate.
We packed up and went to check out at 10am. They seemed a little sad that their own guests were leaving. The new guy at the desk that we hadn't met before offered us a short cut to get to the main highway to Jasper which would save us 30 minutes. He told us we might even see a bear so we were sold.
Oh, before I go on, Alan forgot to mention yesterday that the Australian girl on the desk in Whistler had told us that they had a bear sleeping under their stairs in the staff housing. How cute. I would want to give him a big cuddle.
Anyway, back to the story, so we got on the short cut dirt road and started driving. Unfortunately the guy failed to tell us how long we would be on the road but, before we second guessed ourselves and turned back, we came upon a man on the side of the road who told us we only had a small way to go before hitting the highway. The dirt road was actually 40kms long, so no wonder we were starting to think we'd made a wrong turn somewhere along the way.
We stopped shortly afterwards at a little town called Barriere and found a coffee shop to get some breakfast (sausage and egg muffin with fried potato, not bad). On the wall they had an LCD screen that ran various messages and told us we were at the Station House and Great Barriere Reef. Oh dear! That wasn't the really strange part as next it told us it was 15 February 1996! We all know Canadians are slow, but come on, that's a bit much isn't it? Everyone in the coffee shop stared at us for a while after we came in. Maybe they don't get out-of-towners stopping there too often.
The trip was long and there wasn't that much interesting to see. There were snowy cliffs and we travelled a long way next to North Thompson River. We honestly must have crossed the river about 10 times.
We did see another frozen lake, this time Moose Lake. Sarah had planned for us to stop during the trip today to see a couple of waterfalls. Unfortunately I drove right past the turn off to the first one because of poor signposting. I managed to pull into the parking lot of the second one, but the pictures of it looked pretty sad so we gave it a miss. We were hoping to see a moose or bear or deer somewhere along the way, and despite seeing plenty of signs warning us that they're in the area, all we saw today was 4 squirrels way back on the dirt road near Sun Peaks. Oh and cows. There's lots of cattle farms over here.
Finally we passed over the boarder into Alberta and discovered we had lost an hour. Darn time changes, however it did mean we were now able to check into our hotel. However, before that could happen we had to enter into Jasper National Park. This will teach me to research things better as we were taken by surprise to discover that for 5 nights, the cost was CAD98! They sure know how to charge. Approaching the National Park gates, Sarah had said to me that we'll need to pay about $9 to enter the park. All our cash was in a bag in the car boot so we pulled over to get some money out. Luckily they accepted travellers cheques after the lady at the gate told us it would be $98. Ridiculous! I did have $9 in my head because it is $9.80. That is per person per day or a little cheaper for a family.
Shortly thereafter we arrived at our hotel. We were checked in by Tom, an Australian from Greenwich. For those who don't know Sydney well, that's about 10 minutes from our house. After dropping the bags in the room, Alan went to move the car and when he came back he said Tom was going to upgrade us. The first room was nice with a window looking in to the atrium of the hotel. The upgraded room has an external balcony. However, 5 minutes after being in that room we had to go and asked to be moved as the heater wasn't working. As it is expected to get down to 1 tonight, we thought we might need a bit of heat. So, we were moved into the room next door. Yes, this place is quiet but at least there are some other guests. Tom also gave us vouchers for tomorrow's free buffet breakfast.
We had dinner in the hotel restaurant tonight. Great food. Alan had some sort of burger and I had a steak sandwich, with fried onions, coleslaw and Caesar salad. We then shared a creme brulee for dessert. I should have gotten my own.
We have no plans tonight other than to stay indoors and arrange our plan of attack for tomorrow. We have a number of things to see but it will depend on the weather what we get done. According the to weather forecast, tomorrow is supposed to get to a maximum of 4 degrees with both rain and snow. We'd better rug up.
So, we survived our night in the hotel. It really is spooky being the only guests in a hotel, when you are on the first floor and a couple of staff are staying on the fourth floor. We never knew whether they locked the front door last night and, really, we think it was better not knowing. At least we weren't disturbed by noisy neighbours. There were, however, quite a few strange noises coming from the hallway outside our room at various times during the night. Needless to say that we didn't go out there to investigate.
We packed up and went to check out at 10am. They seemed a little sad that their own guests were leaving. The new guy at the desk that we hadn't met before offered us a short cut to get to the main highway to Jasper which would save us 30 minutes. He told us we might even see a bear so we were sold.
Oh, before I go on, Alan forgot to mention yesterday that the Australian girl on the desk in Whistler had told us that they had a bear sleeping under their stairs in the staff housing. How cute. I would want to give him a big cuddle.
Anyway, back to the story, so we got on the short cut dirt road and started driving. Unfortunately the guy failed to tell us how long we would be on the road but, before we second guessed ourselves and turned back, we came upon a man on the side of the road who told us we only had a small way to go before hitting the highway. The dirt road was actually 40kms long, so no wonder we were starting to think we'd made a wrong turn somewhere along the way.
We stopped shortly afterwards at a little town called Barriere and found a coffee shop to get some breakfast (sausage and egg muffin with fried potato, not bad). On the wall they had an LCD screen that ran various messages and told us we were at the Station House and Great Barriere Reef. Oh dear! That wasn't the really strange part as next it told us it was 15 February 1996! We all know Canadians are slow, but come on, that's a bit much isn't it? Everyone in the coffee shop stared at us for a while after we came in. Maybe they don't get out-of-towners stopping there too often.
The trip was long and there wasn't that much interesting to see. There were snowy cliffs and we travelled a long way next to North Thompson River. We honestly must have crossed the river about 10 times.
We did see another frozen lake, this time Moose Lake. Sarah had planned for us to stop during the trip today to see a couple of waterfalls. Unfortunately I drove right past the turn off to the first one because of poor signposting. I managed to pull into the parking lot of the second one, but the pictures of it looked pretty sad so we gave it a miss. We were hoping to see a moose or bear or deer somewhere along the way, and despite seeing plenty of signs warning us that they're in the area, all we saw today was 4 squirrels way back on the dirt road near Sun Peaks. Oh and cows. There's lots of cattle farms over here.
Finally we passed over the boarder into Alberta and discovered we had lost an hour. Darn time changes, however it did mean we were now able to check into our hotel. However, before that could happen we had to enter into Jasper National Park. This will teach me to research things better as we were taken by surprise to discover that for 5 nights, the cost was CAD98! They sure know how to charge. Approaching the National Park gates, Sarah had said to me that we'll need to pay about $9 to enter the park. All our cash was in a bag in the car boot so we pulled over to get some money out. Luckily they accepted travellers cheques after the lady at the gate told us it would be $98. Ridiculous! I did have $9 in my head because it is $9.80. That is per person per day or a little cheaper for a family.
Shortly thereafter we arrived at our hotel. We were checked in by Tom, an Australian from Greenwich. For those who don't know Sydney well, that's about 10 minutes from our house. After dropping the bags in the room, Alan went to move the car and when he came back he said Tom was going to upgrade us. The first room was nice with a window looking in to the atrium of the hotel. The upgraded room has an external balcony. However, 5 minutes after being in that room we had to go and asked to be moved as the heater wasn't working. As it is expected to get down to 1 tonight, we thought we might need a bit of heat. So, we were moved into the room next door. Yes, this place is quiet but at least there are some other guests. Tom also gave us vouchers for tomorrow's free buffet breakfast.
We had dinner in the hotel restaurant tonight. Great food. Alan had some sort of burger and I had a steak sandwich, with fried onions, coleslaw and Caesar salad. We then shared a creme brulee for dessert. I should have gotten my own.
We have no plans tonight other than to stay indoors and arrange our plan of attack for tomorrow. We have a number of things to see but it will depend on the weather what we get done. According the to weather forecast, tomorrow is supposed to get to a maximum of 4 degrees with both rain and snow. We'd better rug up.
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