Icefield Parkway
During the Great Depression, engineers took a dirt road that wove through the Canadian Rockies from Jasper to Lake Louise and turned it into a 143-mile scenic parkway.
“It’s one of the most spectacular drives in the world,” said David Rose, tour manager for the Collette Vacations trip. “We are going through the heart of the mountain range. While these mountains might not be as high in elevation as the ones in Colorado, they look just as prominent since the valley is on a lower elevation than the valleys in Colorado. That makes the mountains even more impressive to the eyes.”
I felt humbled gazing up at these mammoth monsters filling the skies at every curve in the road. Elk, mountain goats and a bear also made occasional appearances along the way.
At the end of the parkway was the historic Fairmont Lake Louise Hotel, where the nearby Lake Louise Gondola took me to see the same view I’d been admiring, this time from above.
As it was still the skiing season, I stood at the top beside skiers eager for an adrenaline rush who, one by one, disappeared down the mountain slope. The view looked almost like a fake backdrop with too much beauty to be real.
My next stop was the quaint mountain town of Banff, where I walked up and down Banff Avenue to enjoy some retail therapy. With the eye-catching Cascade Mountain visible from downtown, it was easy to keep oriented as I strolled past Banff’s wooden, Swiss-themed shops and restaurants.
Along Banff Avenue, the Ammonite in the Rockies proved that snails could turn into colorful pieces of jewelry given enough centuries. These giant fossils become encased with shiny swirls of vivid colors over the years until they become almost unrecognizable.
“These creatures have been extinct for 5 million years,” said Margaret Higginbottom, owner of Ammonite in the Rockies. “The fossils, found only in Canada, are rarer than diamonds. Scientists believe that it is all of Canada’s underground minerals that make the fossils so colorful.”
The shop displays exhibits on ammonite with a video, photographs, and preserved fossils, and ammonite jewelry is available for purchase. I felt the softness of a piece of ammonite carefully, because each of the small exhibit pieces costs $2,000.
After a night at the Banff Springs Fairmont Hotel, I beheld my favorite view yet from the summit of Sulfur Mountain. An eight-minute gondola ride took me 2,292 feet into the air, where it looked like the entire Canadian Rockies stood around me.
The Banff SkyWalk at the peak provides a main observation deck and an interpretive walkway with even more dazzling vistas. Even the large Banff Springs Hotel looks like a tiny model castle against the dramatic scenery.
The view was the perfect memory to take back with me on the last leg of my trip in Calgary. I watched the mountains slowly disappear as we moved westward to the prairies surrounding cosmopolitan Calgary. I shopped at the Calgary Stampede Gift Shop and the Calgary Mall before embracing Calgary’s cowboy history at the Western-themed Mavericks with a buffet dinner.
That evening, when I checked my photos from the trip, I was disappointed that they didn’t match the grandeur of what I had seen. But that just gives me another reason to go back and see it all again.
www.collettevacations.com
