From Bowron we headed back toward Utah through three very beautiful national parks: Jasper, Banff, and Glacier. We didn't have a ton of time so we just stopped at a few places.
Jasper National Park
As we drove into Jasper, we decided to take a scenic detour and stopped at Athabasca Falls. It was a pretty big waterfall, and we had fun walking around and reading nearly all of the posted signs.
Our major stop was the Columbia Ice Fields. These buses are specially made for driving onto the ice field. It's top speed is 12 mph.
Chris is drinking glacier water! It was very cold and quite delicious.
You can see the whole glacier in this picture.
Banff National Park
This is Lake Louise. Many people told us we had to stop at Lake Louise, so here we are! It is a beautiful lake. It gets its beautiful blue color because of rock flour. As the glacier moves it grinds the rocks into a very fine powder and when that mixes with the water it makes the lake a very pretty blue. It has to be the right concentration of rock flour, because if there is too much in the lake it looks like a dingy gray color. But for this lake, it has the perfect concentration of rock flour.
We loved the drive through the parks. It was all very beautiful.
Lake Louise was very pretty, but we also think Lake Moraine is gorgeous. The water was more vibrant than I've ever seen. Lake Moraine was just a short drive from Lake Louise. There is only a tiny parking lot next to Lake Moraine, and I think the only reason we got a parking spot was because it started to rain. The rain seemed persistent so people started to leave and we got a parking spot! Lucky for us, the rain stopped soon after we got out of the car.
Glacier National Park
We arrived at the gates of Glacier National Park on a Saturday morning and found a huge line of cars trying to get into the park. We inched forward and when it finally got to us we found out that they were just letting people in the park for free to try and get the lines shorter. Woohoo! It was our lucky day. We made a lot more scenic stops along the road as we drove through Glacier. Here is our first stop: Lake McDonald Falls.
After that, we went on a 3 mile hike up to Avalanche Lake. I'm sure there is a story behind the name Avalanche Lake, but I don't know what it is. Maybe avalanches are involved.
The view is stunning as you drive along the main road through the park called the Going-to-the-Sun road. Pictures just can't capture what you see as you drive along, but here is an idea of what it looked like.
