Part III of My Week in the Canadian Rockies: Jasper
Guest Post and Photo by Amy Perry BassechesFrom Lake Louise, take your time as you drive the famous Icefields Parkway all the way to Jasper. It’s 143 miles, with tremendous views (13 viewpoints). I can recommend stopping at the Peyto Lake Overlook, about ½ hour outside of Lake Louise. You are rewarded at the end with the view of the intensely colored lake. Also, stop for a snack at the Columbia Icefields Discovery Centre, and walk on the trail to the toe of the Athabasca Glacier. It’s not far, and there are a lot of people, but it does get you up very close. (Note: Skip the $30 pp Glacier Skywalk, a walkway over the Sunwapta Valley. No glaciers to be seen.)
In Jasper, we loved our hotel, The Tekarra Lodge. We stayed in a simple and adequate King Lodge room, above the Dining Room, but I’d definitely recommend the cabins. If you reserve well in advance, there are small, medium, and large cabins. Ask for one near the river. Then you can sit in an Adirondack chair, high above the confluence of the Athabasca and Miette Rivers, and watch the swirling blue water down below. Breakfast at Tekarra (included in the price) was great, and an elk conveniently graced the grass just outside the dining room window one morning.
For meals, Jasper is a real town, with lots of choices for excellent food that isn’t fried tourist fare. We loved Syrahs so much, we went back twice. For starters, we enjoyed the elk carpaccio and the warm seafood salad, followed by the smoked Alberta bison brisket ragout, and the port and fig chicken. My husband Josh said the gin and tonic was the best he’s ever had. Make a reservation and enjoy.
In terms of hikes and things to do, Jasper is in Jasper National Park, so you need a different trail map than the one for Banff and Lake Louise. Grab a Jasper map at the Icefields Discovery Centre on your way between Lake Louise and Jasper, or at the Parks Canada Visitor Center in Jasper (500 Connaught Drive). We didn’t really plan a longer hike on the day we drove into Jasper (we wanted to allow time for short walks off the Icefields Parkway during the long ride), but you could pre-arrange a hike on the glacier if you have 3 hours to spare.
We enjoyed all our hikes in Jasper but it’s hard to top the Bald Hills Trail from Maligne Lake (5 hours round-trip), recommended by the host we met at Syrahs. It really had it all-forest, alpine meadow of wildflowers, mountains, a sweeping view back to Maligne Lake. It was our longest and hardest hike of the week, a "peak" experience, and at times a little narrow when you are up very high. We felt very pleased with our accomplishment and a wee bit tired. It was the perfect way to end our trip to the Canadian Rockies. Don’t hesitate to contact ActiveTravels and I’ll give you the scoop on Jasper, Lake Louise, and Banff, including other exhilarating adventures, like rafting down the Sunwapta River. We’ll be back next week with a new slate of blogs. Thanks, as always, for spending the time with us!
We went to the big Africa Showcase in Boston several weeks ago, where reps from many of the sub-Saharan African countries and many lodge owners do their version of speed pitches for some 6 hours. Loved meeting people from Uganda, Zambia, and Namibia, all high on my wish list. But I absolutely adored the presentation on the 
Guest Post and Photo by Amy Perry Basseches
I spent Memorial Day Weekend in the White Mountains with family and friends, finally bagging Mount Chocorua. Standing 3,478-feet high, it doesn’t make the 4,000-foot club and therefore many avid climbers blow it off. They shouldn’t. This is a classic New England climb with an exquisite panorama of the southern Presidential range and enough granite to leave your quads burning by the end of the trek. We took the Champney Falls Trail, named after the artist who painted the distinctive rocky summit of this peak. Within an hour, we reached picturesque Champney Falls and watched the rushing water stream down a series of ledges. Two hours later, after scrambling through rock, we reached the summit, initially socked in a cloud. Once it started to clear up, we were treated to glorious views of the lakes and green valley below, the snow-covered trails of Mt. Washington in the distance.