Saturday, June 11, 2022 - We got up and prepared our breakfast meal. Since "check in time" was at 2:00 pm and we only had about 60 miles to drive, we did not hurry our departure. By the way, the cost of an overnight stay in the parking lot was $16.75 Canadian or about $13 U.S. After breakfast, were sitting in the RV (I was working on the blog) when another RV pulled in right next to us and only about six feet from our door; pretty rude we thought. In addition, I was not sure that I would be able to pull out with him there. I went out to investigate and found that an RV caravan of 24 units was arriving from Banff and they began to park all around us. I let the man leading this gaggle know that I would be leaving pretty soon and that I needed some room. He was "somewhat indifferent" to my concerns. When we got all hitched up and were ready to leave, I decided to back the camper out and then go around all the others. It worked pretty easy.
As is often the case, if you get distracted, you forget to do something that could be important. It seems that I had forgotten to enter the "Tow/Haul" mode on the truck before I left. I always do this, but in the confusion, must have missed it. This means that the truck is not using the trailer brakes to help stop on any downhill grades. As it turns out, there is a pretty steep downhill grade as you exit the Icefield Center towards Jasper. The truck was doing all of the work trying to slow down its 9,000 pound and the additional 19,000 pounds of trailer pushing it down the hill. We also have an engine braking system in the truck that use the turbo-charger to help us slow down. The turbo-charger began to overwork itself and the revolutions per minute of the engine began to increase towards the red line. The engine gave me an indication that we were in "reduced power mode" and that is not good. I had very little power to pull the trailer once we reached the bottom of the grade. Luckily, I remembered from a past experience that If I stopped and turned the engine off, it just might perform normally upon restart. That is what happened. The engine did work much better, but it still seemed to be a little under-powered and the "check engine" light illuminated (which just about always results in a severe pain in the wallet). We were able to drive all the way to Jasper which does not have a Ford dealer and get into our parking space. I have a device to check the reason for the check engine light and it did mention that the turbo-charger sensor had activated. Sometimes, these sensors "reset" themselves over the next 12 hours of driving; I think this may of happened, but we have an appointment in Edmonton to have it looked at next week.
After the truck issue, were not too motivated to do too much for this afternoon. We did drive into Jasper to look around and we also drove up past Patricia Lake to Pyramid Lake where we checked out the kayaking possibilities. We thought that we might give it a try, but it was pretty small. We later decided to go to Maligne Lake on the next day. We found a pair of those red chairs that are placed all around the area and relaxed to enjoy the views around Pyramid Lake.
Sunday, June 12, 2022 - On Sunday morning, we made reservations at the St. Alberts Kinsman RV park; our next destination. Since we have a reservation to have the truck looked at on Monday, we scheduled all the way through Tuesday in Edmonton. We plan to ride bikes there quite a bit as they have many riding trails that are listed as excellent. We will see. We are getting a little low on regular gasoline for the generator, so we went into Jasper to purchase a five-gallon gas can and buy some fuel. It is Sunday so all the stores where I might get a gas can were closed. We decided to try again on Monday. Again, weather played a part in our decision-making processes. Still wet and rainy making it hard to ride bikes, kayak, or hike. It turned out to be another day where I could work on the blog. We have "quiet hours" at the campground and can only run the generator from 8:00 am to 10:00 am and then again form 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm. For this reason, I could not use the computer without its charger plugged in and it would run out of power forcing me to go do something else. Nice when you have services like power, sewer, and water, but is sure is nice to be isolated in the wilderness with bears coming and going on nearly a daily basis.
Monday, June 13, 2022 - Today we drove about 30 miles to the south to Maligne Lake. This is a long, narrow lake and excellent for kayaking. The water is "icey cold," so we wore our neoprene wetsuits just in case one of us was to go into the water. It was and overcast day, but the clouds were above the mountains and we could see the snow-covered peaks. It was beautiful. We kayaked for about six miles in total and enjoyed it. There is a commercial company that provides boat tours to the far end of the lake where the mountains are quite majestic, but we opted not to do it because of the cost of over $70 each. Besides, we got pretty close to those mountains in the kayaks. We did not see any animals although one fisherman told us that there was a moose on the opposite side of the lake. We crossed the lake, but did not see any moose. We think that he may have just wanted to get us out of his fishing spot (just kidding!) We began the kayak back to the launch and encountered a little wind and some light drizzle. We also noticed that all of the large tour boats would slow down as they passed near us; very polite. Then we thought that they also did not want there wake to swamp us into the cold water. After we reached the launch point, we loaded the kayaks onto the truck and then went to the lodge to check out food prices. We did not like what they had, so we decided to just head into town. On the way, we saw our first moose of the trip grazing alongside the road. We have shots of it on the blog photo gallery. We went into town and decided to go to our old favorite; Subway. After lunch, we walked around town a little and then headed back to the RV.
Tuesday, June 14, 2022 - This was a rainy day, so I stay in the RV to work on the blog. As I was looking out the slider to the patio, I noticed some movement. Turns our that there were three bears grazing right off the end of our deck. I went out and got some photos and videos of them. A mom and two cubs. We watched them for quite a while and then two park service employees with bear spray and what looked like shotguns came up to scare them away. They chased the bears into the forest and followed them to make sure that the traveled some distance from the campground. Very interesting to watch. Overall, this turned out to be a pretty rainy day and a good day to rest and plan our stops at future destinations.
Wednesday, June 15, 2022 - The weather was a little "unsettled" in the morning, so we loitered around the RV. At about noon, we decided to go take a look at the Miligne River Canyon. It is a narrow canyon cut by the river and you are allowed to walk along the rim of the canyon and look down at the rapidly flowing water. Apparently, in the winter the water freezes and you can actually walk in the canyon. Not me!! Also, it seems that the water comes out of the ground to feed this river and geologists think that there may be the longest cavern in Canada underground where this water goes underground and to where it re-emerges miles downstream. I will make a video of this canyon; it is pretty amazing to see.
We then drove to hike the trail to Five Lakes. From the Five Lakes Trailhead, it is about three miles out and back to the lakes. The lakes are very nice and we only saw three of the five. We met some very nice people who took photos of us and then we reciprocated and took photos of their families. All in all, we ended up with over six miles of hiking on this day and about 25% of it was in rainy drizzle. It way fun though and we returned to the RV for more R and R.
Thursday, June 16, 2022 - We departed for Edmonton, the capital of the Province of Alberta, Canada.