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12-13 october, jasper national park 12:01 PM

Jasper, in comparison to Banff, is the largest national park in the Rockies. It'll be our last stop in this roadtrip for a final dose of mountains, lakes and nature, before we continue heading east for the city of Edmonton. Apart from the usual, Jasper's also well-known for its great diversity of wildlife varieties - interestingly, these animals don't only appear in the wilderness; people usually see them strutting just alongside shops and roads in Jasper town!

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Jasper Town

   

I still find it amazing how mountains surround and envelop these towns; they're so near yet so far..

 

Jasper's Chaba Theatre and Rail Station are also places of interest here. We did think of catching a film (thought it might be cool and Chaba was screening Richard Gere somemore, haha) but the timing was bad; they only screen 1-2 movies every day.

It was good that Jasper ain't as commercialized nor touristy and overcrowded like Banff, which felt refreshingly quiet for a change. Things generally aren't as expensive too. So yep, although the shops here are kinda similar to Banff's and I don't need to spend time talking about them, there was a cafe here that got me hooked that I went there twice within 5 hours! Haha.

  

Tada! Highly recommended in Lonely Planet, this is The Other Paw Bakery Cafe. It was named as such cos this is already its 2nd outlet in Jasper; the 1st was called "Bear's Paw" and located at the end of the street. I visited that too but didn't find the ambience as nice, heh.

   

See the sumptuous myraid of baked goods they offer! There's a wide variety of gourmet blended coffees too, that's my 2nd cuppa of the day, a big yummylicious caramel macchiato!

 

The warmth and cosiness of the interior, with bright colours in just the right places

         

My breakfast for that day - mochaccino and raspberry white scone. The scone's HUGE (nothing like the Old Granny Raisin scone at Starbucks, nor My Mother's scone in Coffee Bean - did I get the names right?) and only CAD 2.10! Very cheap and value-for-money. Okay I sound very auntie here, haha. Breakfast was nice too cos I met and chatted with an elderly English couple, they were on an amazing 2-month travel trip (though barely a quarter done at that time). But it was heartwarming to see the way they cared and looked out for each other as partners and soul mates. They enthusiastically narrated their travel plans to me too, which I think are even more exciting than mine, haha. It was nice talking to them, and one day too - as I've always wished - I want to grant my parents the opportunity to travel around at their own pace as well. Not too far from that I hope! :)

And oh oh, to the right's a cute cookie souvenir I saw, you can actually build your own Inukshuk from the little rectangles! Haha.. so quite a 2-in-1 Canadian momento, since it's maple-flavoured as well. But I didn't buy it la.. yep.

P/S: Eeyer.. I just realized I blogged ALOT about food, ROAR. Tskk.. okay back to geography! Haha.

 

The Mystery of Medicine Lake
Medicine Lake is geologic anomaly; it is not actually a lake but instead an area in which the Maligne River backs up and suddenly disappears underground. The phenomenon is explained as such:

In the summer months of intensified icecap meltdown, the lake fills to levels which fluctuate over time with varying runoff events. Most of the time during that period, it is often filled too quickly for drainage to take place, resulting in the flooding of its basin and hence the formation of Medicine Lake. The lake remains laden with water until it can slowly drain off and reduce to a river prior to winter, when runoff levels are low once more.

P/S: If you'd read the above and understand what I'm saying, you'd know I'd caught Medicine Lake when it no longer looks like a lake. But even if you didn't bother/understand what I wrote, you can see from this picture too, haha.

 

Channels and streams of muddy murky waters.. seemingly the ugliest but most interesting "lake" we've seen thus far, haha. We also read that Indians used to believe the disappearance of the lake was due to "big medicine" or black magic, and they feared it..!

 

Maligne Lake
Maligne Lake is a favourite attraction, particularly cos boat trips run from here to Spirit Island, which is one of the most beautiful and popular sights in Jasper. To our disappointment, though, boat trips are already closed by this time of the year! :(

 

 

So it became pretty much a normal lake that we saw. Still turquoise and vast like Lake Louise, although it's very much quieter here (but I reckon it's cos the boat trips are closed that's why, haha).

xx

To speak the truth, we didn't do nor see much in Jasper itself. We were probably tired by this time since we were constantly on the go; it was also drizzling that morning in Jasper so things felt a little dreary and gloomy. We (the girls) actually intended to go horseback riding too but couldn't cos of the weather; and my initial plans of possibly trying whitewater rafting were ruined as well. There were other attractions too like the Pyramid and Patricia Lakes, but I guess as much as lakes are nice to gaze at, I think we were all quite tired of them by then, haha.

Oh, but we did see wildlife as we were about to leave Jasper! This was a family of (I-seriously-dono-what), and they were about to cross the road from the gas station to reach the grasslands on the other side! Haha.. and they did stop to look left and right you know, unless my eyes were playing tricks and they were just taking their own sweet time (since no one will dare knock them anyway, it's an offence)!

 

 

It's quite exciting to come that close to widlife - though it was scary too, haha.

   

And while on the highway we saw mountain goats as well (actually we saw many cars pulling over so we decided to join in the crowd; typically Singaporean la! Haha..) There were many photojournalists and all as well everywhere we went, they seemed to be from National Geographic or the like with the kinds of equipment they had, heh. So well, it'd been a good break in the national parks - for now, we're off and back to urbanization! :)

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You are an enthusiastic innovator, always seeing new possibilities and new ways of doing things. You have a lot of imagination and initiative for starting projects, and a lot of impulsive energy for carrying them out. You are stimulated by difficulties and are most ingenious in solving them. You can get so interested in your newest project that you have time for little else. Your energy comes from a succession of new enthusiasms and your world is full of possible projects. Your enthusiasm gets other people interested too.

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A difficulty for you is that you hate uninspired routine and find it remarkably hard to apply yourself to sometimes necessary detail unconnected with any major interest. Worse yet, you may get bored with your own projects as soon as the major problems have been solved or the initial challenge has been met. You may need to learn to follow through and finish what you have begun, but are happiest and most effective in jobs that permit one project after another, with somebody else taking over as soon as the situation is well in hand.

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