If Banff is Canada’s Yosemite, a stunning combination of grand vistas, soaring mountains, azure lakes, and dramatic waterfalls, where throngs of tourists clog every attraction and hip commercial development provides visitors with high end retailers, craft beers, upscale restaurants, and expensive hotels, Jasper National Park is Canada’s Glacier. Bigger, higher, rawer, as beautiful, with fewer people and more modest services. Both should be on your must-see list. They are, quite literally, breathtaking.

After a couple nights in Banff, we headed north to Jasper on the Ice Fields Parkway, a 147-mile two-lane road that winds its way along the Continental Divide between the two parks. Conde Nast rates it as “one of the top drives in the world.” I’d never heard of it, so I had few expectations as we turned off Canada Route 1 and onto the Parkway. While the sun shone and the clouds hovered above the peaks, we were treated to an unending spectacle of snow-capped ridges, broad forested valleys, and sparkling lakes. It didn’t last long.

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We are sitting by a campfire in Banff National Park, Alberta Canada, Tunnel Mountain Village Campground #2, campsite 41 A. It’s an interesting campground. There are three large camp loops (A, B, & C), each consisting of five parallel roads about 3/8th of a mile long. The roads are connected on the ends by a U-shaped turn around, and an access road runs across the middle. The roads are about fifty feet apart. Picnic tables, fire rings, and electrical hook-ups, also spaced about 50 feet apart, line each side of the roads.

When we arrived, we drove down the correct road, found 41 A, swung over to the gravel shoulder in front of our picnic table, fire ring, and power station. We parallel parked, plugged in and we were there. While there is room to put up a tent, no one has. This part of the campground is clearly designed for RV’s. It is easy access, easy setup, high density, and compact. In a small area there are sites for over 200 RV’s. Some as long as forty-five feet.

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On long road trips you have a couple of options. The fast one, where you hop on the Interstate, set your cruise control at 5 miles over the speed limit, and fly. Or the meandering one, the one where you head out on State Highway or County Road such and such, the one where you cruise close to the fields, up and down rolling hills, across train tracks, past barns and silos, and within smelling distance of livestock and fertilizer. The one where the speed limit never exceeds 60 mph and every 15 miles or so you need to throttle down to 45 and then 35 as you pass through one small town after another. Most of our trips have been of the fast variety. Get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible, see the sights, take a hike, move on. This time we’re slowing down, travelling on two lane roads, staying off the Interstates.

We are enjoying it. The roads are surprisingly good, well maintained with decent shoulders. The traffic as sparce as the population, no wrangling with an endless line of 18-wheelers. Whatever there is to see is near at hand. When John is driving and I am free to do whatever I want – read, knit, play games on my phone – what I mostly do is look out the window, watch the world go by, and think about what I’m seeing. What is the land telling me about where I am, about the people and animals that inhabit that place, the terrain and geology, the economy and the ecology? Whenever we stop for fuel or to stretch our legs, it is easy to make a human connection with the people we meet. Ask directions or wonder about a landscape feature and people are welcoming and happy to talk. It is good to be reminded that, red state or blue, most people are just people.
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It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly 5 years since our last Tencenturies entry. A week ago, we set out on another adventure – a six-week trek from Minneapolis to Alaska and back – and are firing up Tencenturies to communicate with anyone who is interested in the journey. So, if you are interested, here goes…

Background:

National Parks: At a party in 2015, our friend Bob Appel mentioned that he was on a quest to visit all (at that time) 59 US National Parks. What a wonderful idea, I thought. I want to do that. I’d never met a National Park I didn’t like and setting up a goal to see all of them seemed like a great organizing principal for our domestic travel. Thanks to my parents and our annual summer migrations from Los Angeles to New England to visit relatives, by the time I reached adulthood, I’d visited 16 National Parks. Travels with John and the kids between 1974 and 2015 had added another 16. I had a good start.

Fast forward to 2022. There are now 63 National Parks (NPs), the most recent one, New River Gorge added in December 2020. I have visited 57 of them. Six more to go. One of the remaining parks is Wrangel-St. Elias National Park and Preserve – an enormous wilderness area just north of the Canadian border in Alaska. At 13.2 million acres, Wrangell is the largest US National Park, over twice as big as Denali and almost 6 times the size of Yellowstone. Of the 8 NPs in Alaska, it is the only one we haven’t visited. That is where we are headed.

The Alcan Highway: John has always wanted to drive the Alcan Highway – the storied 1,387-mile road from Dawson Creek, British Columbia, through the Yukon to Delta Junction, Alaska. John’s an explorer at heart. The distance, the remoteness, and the unknowns intrigue him. In the olden days the Alcan was a dirt highway with few services, many potholes, copious wildlife, and plenty of opportunities for solo problem solving. Today it is much civilized. It is paved and we don’t have to worry about carrying extra fuel to get us from one gas station to the next. Nevertheless, it is a long drive into remote territory with much to see and experience. The entire trip, with the need to get from Minneapolis to the start at Dawson Creek, return from Delta Junction, and experience Wrangel St. Elias, will exceed 8,000 miles.
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