Today was a pleasant, uneventful last day in mountain country. We left Prince George, BC at 8 this morning, and cut back across British Columbia and Alberta, completing our northern loop.
The Spotwalla satellite track of our loop through northwest Canada and southern Alaska.
If you squint when you look at the little map, you can see that we followed a mountain valley back to Jasper, then cut across the middle of the park, and then continued on to the city of Edmonton.
Low clouds, rain showers, and a damp chill followed us much of the way, but that’s what we’ve come to expect.
Low clouds from a gas stop.
We stopped for lunch at Tim Horton’s at the town of Jasper. We’d had dinner in Jasper on our way north last week. So nice to have a fast food place with good soup and croissants for lunch! If only the biggest fast food chain in the US would serve that. And honey crullers!
We saw a giant super cell thunderstorm off in the distance, and saw a big enough flash of lightening that both Howard and I remarked on it over dinner tonight. Fortunately, though we continued to go through scattered showers, we did not have to deal with storms. Once we left Jasper and the nearby town of Hinton (outside of which we saw both bighorn sheep and a giant elk!) we were clearly back into the central plains of North America, and I’m afraid it will be the prairie for the rest of the trip.
By the time we reached Edmonton, the skies had cleared and it was almost hot out.
Let me finish up this decidedly unphilosophical post by giving a shout-out to Howard’s sister, Susannah. She very generously gave us Marriott points to pay for our hotels anytime we were able to find a Marriott property. Up north, they were decidedly not available. But tonight we are in a comfortable Courtyard hotel, and I will soon go down to take advantage of the whirlpool.
Thank you, Susannah!