We woke to a glorious day in Jasper and as we had rather a large meal the evening before, we decided to skip breakfast and to take a walk around the lake at the Jasper Lake Resort where we are staying. It was the perfect way to begin our day and although it was a short walk it was invigorating. Breakfast was still available in the restaurant when we returned so we stopped by for juice and coffee before making our way back to our room.
When we were on the Ice Explorer at Athabasca Glacier our Aussie driver gave us a recommendation for a meal in Jasper at the Korean BBQ restaurant so we organised our friends Geoff and Diana to join us for lunch. We all caught the shuttle from our hotel to downtown Jasper that takes around 20 minutes, and headed straight to the restaurant where we were seated immediately. It didn’t take us long to choose our meal as we had already seen the menu selections the day prior. Three of us ordered the sizzling bbq plates and Diana ordered a huge bowl of delicious tofu soup.
We devoured our meals and all declared it one of the best we had eaten. After we had paid our bill (that was also the cheapest meal so far) we still had around an hour to kill before we had to find the bus to take us on our raft tour along the Athabasca River.
We wandered around town and I took quite a few photos of various points of interest and we stopped at the chemist for a few supplies. I also picked up a T-Shirt for Philip that shows a bear chasing a cyclist with the words “Finally. Some Lean Meat”. Philip is pleased that I think he is lean…..
The Rafting Tour bus – an old school bus- arrived right on time to take us to the beginning of our downstream rafting tour. It is only a twenty minute drive and we were all pretty excited to be doing this tour. We were assured it is not a white-water raft but more a float along the river and we would only get wet if our guide decided he wanted to wet us!
The rafts are quite large and there was 16 of us aboard including our captain. We are all seated along the inflated part of the raft and were given instructions as to where to hold on if needed.
We start off through some very gentle water and then get into some smaller rapids that our captain negotiates very well but then we hit some bigger rapids and boy, do we get wet and the water is freezing! But it’s all good fun and on the positive side our clothes got washed in the cleanest water they will ever be washed in!
The tour lasted around an hour and it went so fast. I could have stayed on that raft a lot longer. Once we reached our final destination, we quickly alighted the raft and were once again on board the old school bus back to our hotel.
Around two kilometres from our hotel someone yelled out “bear on the left” and our driver came to a halt and backed up to where the sighting was. We were all silenced by what we saw. Not one bear but a mumma bear with two cubs! The bus driver immediately turned off the bus and asked us all to only talk in whispers as these bears were quite close to the road and could easily be scared off. These were grizzly bears and our tour driver said that the mother was only young – maybe four years old.
We sat and watched as the bears moved closer to us and you could have heard a pin drop on the bus. It was just the most awesome thing I have ever experienced. The bears climbed up and down trees and it was almost like they were putting on a show for us. Incredible.
Finally, the bears moved away and we continued on our journey carrying with us the memory of a lifetime.
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