twenty dollars gets you all this and more

After a good nights sleep, we were ready to get on with our trip and finally get to Shane's sister and brother in law's place.
It didn't happen.
We got a late start out of Cranbrook (surprise surprise) and didn't get as far as we thought we would.

Our first stop was at Lucier natural hot springs.


Here's the glacier fed river that runs right next to the hot springs. The difference in water temperature was insane!


Here's Shane taking a natural hot shower at the hot springs.


Here he is meditating on the healing powers of sulphur.


Here we are spanning time. Apparently Shane was doing his best Vincent Gallo in Buffalo 66 routine, but I didn't catch on. We took a lot of photos like this.


Here's some crazy corroding mountains.

At this point the highway turns into a string of Canadian National Parks. It'll cost you twenty bucks to do the drive, but it is so worth it! We, of course, only got to see half of the attractions before its pitch black night.


Here's where the mountains divide to let the cars through.


Here's the first picture perfect rest stop on our journey through the parks.


Here's Shane taking advantage of the rest stop by taking a nap on the wall. Shortly after these photos were taken a torrential downpour and a bus load of tourists chased Shane away.



Here's a real forest with a real mountain in the background. I know it looks too good to be true!


Here's a really straight stretch of highway. It went on for a long time like this. It was pretty neat.


Here's the sun coming out... just in time to set.


Here's a storm moving in.


Here's a crazy mf'n mountain complete with glacier (not shown). Look at the colour of that water!


Here are some picturesque glacial lakes with land and sky reflected in the water. Sigh.


These are the last photos from day three. After this it was too dark to take any photos. We kept driving to get to Tanya and Jason's when we really should have stayed put and waited until morning to take in the rest of the sights. There were several times during the rest of our nighttime drive when I caught a glimpse of scenery in the moonlight that I thought would be pretty breathtaking during daylight hours (including a huge herd of elk). We will definitely have to do the tour again. It was effing majestic, people! My photos do not do this country justice!

We drove to Jasper, which is about an hour away from our final destination, but were stopped because the highway had been blocked off due to a six car pile-up that occurred hours before. Jasper was packed with people waiting for the highway to open up again. We slept in our car in a line up of other cars on the side of the highway.