Icefields Parkway

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On the border of Alberta and British Columbia is a group of four national parks (Yoho, Kootenay, Banff, and Jasper) and a few provincial parks that collectively make up the Canadian Rocky Mountains World Heritage Site. I entered through the town of Radium Hot Springs into Kootenay. The scenery was pretty incredible:

At a road junction there were a bunch of people pulled over taking photos of this elk grazing on a small tree behind a cabin:

A woman walked out the back door, massed around with some things on the ground for 30 seconds or so, then strolled off past her car before she noticed all the people watching, then saw the 600 pound animal that had been standing 6 feet away from her. Here she shouts through the window to her husband, who comes and looks out the back door:

Past the town of Lake Louise the grand mountain scenery picks up again, even better than before. This part of highway 93 between Banff and Jasper is called the Icefields Parkway, and it's turned up to 11:

The sun was setting, which made good light on the mountains so far, but unfortunately meant it got dark before I even made it halfway down the parkway, so I have no idea what I even missed out on. I made it to turquoise-colored (due to glacial sediments) Bow Lake just after sunset, where the crescent Moon was just above Bow Glacier and Bow Glacier Falls, and these pictures don't do justice to the scene:

Next time: