Headed out of Jasper to Miette Hot Springs – there is more beautiful scenery than you can poke a stick at here.
Stopped at the site of the Jasper house trading post in the days of the fur trade. Interesting to see how much the Indigenous people and the Europeans interacted and shared the fur trade here. Also to see how tough the living was back then. I honestly think it would be hard to find people who could live like that now?
Grassy site of Jasper house across the river 
Walk to Jasper house site
Got a better view of some mountain goats up a cliff on the way that were really going hard to lick the minerals from the dirt.
Young mountain goat hanging in there 
Getting that salt lick 
Mountain goats up the mountain 
What you looking at?
3 August
Then up the mountains to be the first to get into Miette hot springs. Was definitely worth getting there early before the crowds struck because it got pretty hectic later. The pools were lovely with great mountain views and were nice and warm but not that real steamy hot you’d expect. The storm from last night had knocked the power out and they hadn’t been able to pump more hot springs water in or something like that.
Miette hot springs
A bummer but it was still a nice relax. I’d walked about 23 km yesterday in my ‘barefoot’ sandals so a soak was nice.
I love my Xero barefoot sandals and I can even hike in them comfortably but I think in shorter bursts would be good. I especially love how they barely take any room in my bag!
After a nice day in the mountains and a picnic in the forest we headed off towards Valemount where my next Dr meeting is. Drove through more beautiful mountainous scenery. Looking on the map you’d think it was quite boring- outside of all the famous national parks but its between three mountain ranges and at the confluence of some major rivers and is really beautiful.
Dinner at the Valemount moose pub was really delicious and good value with plenty of Canadian favourites.
Valemount camping
We stayed at the lovely forested Yellowhead RV park which has great facilities if you’re passing this way. It sits on the beautiful Swift Creek.
We couldn’t swim or even sit too close to the river though as it’s under salmon spawning protection. The rivers around here were once the world’s greatest salmon rivers but the numbers continue to dwindle rapidly at a scary rate really. They are now making desperate attempts to allow the salmon to spawn undisturbed and restricting fishing of salmon hoping to improve numbers. Hopefully it’s not too late. Sadly the cycle is tied in to a much bigger ecosystem that seems to be suffering at all inflection points. I’ve always tried to be environmentally aware without being fanatics but the more one travels and sees systems suffering and declining around the world the more urgent looking after our environment seems to be.
Huckleberries on my breakfast 
Valemount health centre doctor 
Valemount Swiss bakery
Had a great meeting with one of the drs which again led to even more contacts. He was lovely and took me to this Swiss bakery for real coffee ( anything other than filter coffee is pretty rare in Canada) . It was so good I brought Ron back here later. After the meeting and a coffee we hit the road again. Saw an ad for a river safari claiming to see bears. I googled the reviews which said most people didn’t see anything ad you could see as much driving up the road there. So we took a turn in and kept being tempted to go further on the unpaved road until we noticed we’d ended up on the top of a mountain . Was a great forest drive with views AND we saw a black bear- bear no. 3!
The tour company also ran Jeep safaris and when they passed us in our little corolla going up the mountain I’m sure they were cheesed off but not as much as the tourist in the back seat who’s paid big bucks for their ‘adventure’.
One thing we’ve noticed is that Canadian drivers just love speeding and tailgating which can be quite scary when they’re all driving big trucks and massive f250 utes!
Even in a heavy rainstorm they’ll do some mad overtaking and speeding.
