Jasper, Alberta, Canada

We’ve been here for 5 days now and have settled in to the small town life. We’re slowly meeting new people and making new friends. It’s hard to think of things to say that Beth hasn’t already covered so I won’t say too much about the town; I’ll just skip to the ELK.

Bull Elk

They pretty much hang around a nearby hotel, every night. There is one big male that we’ve seen and a younger male with lots of females that hang around. They are quite peaceful animals, and pretty much just stand there, grazing. Except for the bull. He patrols the area while his women eat. It’s really scary because they look so placid but you have no idea what might set him off and he could charge at you. The other night he attacked a car. There are plenty of warnings that tell you to stay 30 meters away, unfortunately many tourists ignore those warnings, and I’m very surprised there aren’t more attacks.

We haven’t seen a moose or a bear yet, most of the tours close for the winter and we just missed most of them. We also missed the Maligne Lake boat cruise, which takes you out onto this lake to a place called Spirit Island. We really wanted to do that one, because it’s one of the most famous images of the Rockies. The Icefields close soon too, hopefully we can get up to see the glaciers ASAP. It’s proving a little difficult to get the same days off work at the moment whilst we are still training.

I started work on Monday night at Chateau Jasper, and Beth started on Tuesday night at the Lobstick Lodge. Both hotels are next to each other and only about 100 meters from our accommodation. So far we’re both enjoying work, although it is a bit quiet at the moment, which makes the shifts drag a bit, but we also have a lot of information to take in. Blind Melon stayed at my hotel last night and I had to smooth things over with them regarding a complaint, and Beth had lots of Media stay at her hotel because the Edmonton Oilers Ice Hockey team came to town to finish of their pre-season preparation. I was keen to see them train but we went up to the Jasper Tramway instead because it closes soon and it’s also one of those things that you HAVE to do in Jasper.

It’s getting really cold here, just last week it was around 25 degrees in town, today it is down to 4 and tomorrow is forecast to get to 5 with a low of -7. Hopefully it will snow in town early next week. But it looks like after the weekend, we won’t see any day above 5 degrees for a long, long time (the 14 day trend looks a lot like the stock market charts). On the upside, I can’t wait to learn to snowboard, which should only be a few weeks away now.

S.

Getting colder...