Maligne Lake
As I mentioned on a previous post, that I have been on a road trip to Canada. On this trip, our family rented two houses in two places for two weeks. The first week we stayed in Jasper National Park in an area west of Hinton but east of Jasper, AB. We loved the large house in the country with a big back yard. Days were long and it allows us to sleep late, wake up near lunch time, eat lunch, often at the outside grill, and leave for the day around Jasper for day hikes to return around 9 or 10 pm and repeat the next day. This was a lot of fun.
Just the drive to the Park will always involve looking at some Mountain Goats and Black Bears along side the road.
So see these, I didn't do anything special or did anything special. As I already mentioned, there was no early morning 'zero-dark-thirty' required, and I didn't go to any special spot. These sightings were all along the side of a major Alberta highway 16. The highway we took every morning/aftermoon to visit various places.
One area I particularly liked is Maligne Lake. It was about little more than 1 hour drive from the rental property we were staying. However, the road is so beautiful, it is virtually impossible not to stop at various places along the way.
One such stop was Medicine Lake. There is an interesting story about this Lake. It is an outlet of the Maligne river drainage which connects the Maligne Lake to Athabasca River. However, it is connected via underground karst drainage system which is quite extensive. During summer meltwater it backs up and fills the lake, but during fall the lake mostly dries up. We saw it mostly full. Here is my older daughter sitting on a rock by the Medicine Lake.
Then the road winds its way up to Maligne Lake, which is a rather popular tourist destination. There is a beautiful boat house, and if you are interested you can do a trip along and around the lake.
The Lake is rather stunning. We arrived there fairly late in the day, when boating was mostly done. However, still there was plenty of daylight left, so we hiked around the lake and saw boats returning and plenty of moose!
There were make nooks around the lake where small row boats were parked for the day and if you are familiar with canadian rockies, they make wonderful pictures.
We sat down at this location for a while had a snack dinner that we brought with us. Sun sets here past 10pm so being late wasn't much of a problem on this trip. The drive back to the rental was a bit tiring this day if I remember correctly, but it was worth it.
Some days we arrived back early and there is always sunshine left to look some dinner.
