Jasper and Lake Louise long weekend

Well we have just had our first long weekend,,, something about Victoria's Birthday. We took ourselves off to Japser for a night, camped at a National Park camp ground. The weather was a little wet Saturday so spent the day mostly on a reccie run to decide what hikes we would like to do this summer. We're keen to do some walks around Mt Robson (the highest mountain in the Candian Rockies),, and apparently they haven't had a grizzly problem for a couple of years (Oh Joy!!) A short side trip to Maligne Canyon (pronounced Maleen- Swiss for wicked or something) is well worth it. A huge amount of water squeezes through this little slot in the walls. In winter it all freezes and you can take tours of the Canyon bottom. We continued up the road to Maligne Lake and took a short walk along the shore. Came across a beautiful spot where there were dozens of rainbow trout and some beautiful harlequin ducks on their summer stop over! The next day we travelled south along the Icefields Parkway. We really under-estimated how long it would take us to travel the short distance - just one spectacular scene after another! Athabasca Falls, followed by Columbia Icefield, Athabasca Glacier and Lake Louise and heaps more. Many of the lakes were still frozen! And yes we did see Black Bear - 3 in total - and all from the (very welcome) safety of the car. One in particular was feeding on berries on the side of the road one morning.