What a day of contrasts this has been, and, for a change, I'm not talking about the weather. The weather was absolutely beautiful, mostly sunny and in the low 60s throughout the parks.

The contrasts were with the landscape and road conditions. Shortly after leaving Grand Prairie we got onto a road that was gravel and dirt so tons of dust... to the point I had to put my mask on in the car because it was getting to my lungs. We were on that for over 2 1/2 hours, and we were truly the only cars on it. Everything else on the road were trucks... logging, oil tankers and pickup trucks getting to the area to work. LOTS of logging going on, as well as drilling for oil. Sad to see such magnificent landscape being butchered. No wonder they don't give a decent road for people to use and thus see the devastation taking place. It was a shorter distance for us by 3 hours, so was worth it.

Shortly after getting onto the main "highway" again, we entered into Jasper National Park and the scenery changed drastically. Mountains; fall colors; jade colored rivers and lakes; and waterfalls. SPECTACULAR!! Such a contrast from what we saw earlier in the day.

Even within the park the scenery changed significantly as well. We came upon the Athabasca Falls soon after entering Jasper and got out for a nice walk around them and to see at different angles. Nice to get out and enjoy after driving for about 5 hours. After that we drove through some fields without the mountains and trees around them.

Our other pictures today were taken at Bow Lake and then here in Banff. Staying at a beautiful resort where we had hoped to take a hot tub and overlook the mountains, but there were too many people there. David, unlike in Japan, you are able to be exposed to Covid at hot tubs and hot springs here.

Tomorrow we head to Glacier National Park in Montana so will be crossing the border after 3-4 hours of travel. As far as we've been able to find we don't need a Covid test to cross... HOPING this info is correct!!