We woke to a slightly warmer day, fresh snow on the mountains and the sight of geese flying south in formation from our rooms balcony.
We took some time to walk around the town of Jasper, checked up a few stores and topped up on a couple if essentials.
As we left town there was a huge bull elk with massive antlers by the side of the road with his two ladies. He was causing quite a stir with a lot of cars stopping to take his pic. Another small herd were a little further on.
We drove through a white wintery landscape but didn't hit falling snow til after a fuel stop in Hinton. Once we left there and turned north it was flurries most of the way. The snow still lay at road level, thicker than we'd had further south yesterday.
We stopped at Grand Cache for a late-ish lunch complete with a welcome hot chocolate for me. Pete, ever the snow bunny opted for a chocolate milkshake lol the cafe was full of pommes! We couldn't decide if they were tourists like us or lived there although I did hear one say, when he did an intro to a table of other pommes that he was a resident there working in construction.
We gradually went lower and the snow tapered off. The forest and mountains gave way to flatter land. We passed a big coal fired power station and many fracking and gas installations.
Once through Grand Prarie it became rural again, flat prairies & wheat fields.
A town named Beaverlodge had a big beaver a la Aussies big bananas etc lol of course we had to have a pic with the big beaver! There's a hair salon in town called The Sheared Beaver lmao At least they get the joke too :-)
It was still cool, about 5C and we are fully surrounded by cloud, there's no sign of mountains so we're not sure if we've left them behind us or if they're still there but under the dark clouds.
We went back an hour as we crossed into British Columbia, back onto west coast time. Shortly after crossing it started snowing again.
The prairies seem to be some sort of staging post for the geese as they get ready to head south for the winter; the mown hay paddocks we pass have big flocks in them. Quite a few trees seem to be changing into their autumn finery, a fair bit earlier than usual due to the cold snap.
We got to Dawson Creek which is the start of the Alaska Highway and our stop for the night. We went for a walk in snow flurries with really huge flakes to get some chicken to cook for dinner and settled in for some telly and then bed in our cozy room.