Luxury Accomodation

Last night we stayed at jasper Youth Hostel in our boarding school style dorm.  As soon as the lights came on this morning at 8am, the whole place came alive.  It was like listening to a symphony of velcro, cords and zips whizzing back in forth.  We lay in bed for a while but soon decided enough was enough and got up. 

Whilst in Jasper we decided to splash out and booked into Bear Hill Lodge in the town.  It is a collection of wood cabins surrounded by trees.  It seems such luxury after hostelling for so long.

We headed up to two near by lakes, we stopped at Pyramid Lake to have our lunch and then did a short walk around Patricia Lake.  Apparently this lake has an interesting nugget of history dating back to the second world war.

  By 1942 allied shipping losses in the North Atlantic had become so great, that allied commanders were willing to listen to any suggestions.  A guy called Geoffrey Pike put forward the idea of a vast aircraft carrier made of ice, that would be impervious to torpedo fire and would not melt in the icy water of the north atlantic.  "Operation Habbakuk" was launched, and on the cold waters of Patricia Lake, a boat made of ice and wood chips was built, 650m long and 20 storeys high.  Needless to say it had trouble floating - and that was the end of that good idea!!

In the evening we walked into Jasper and had a beer or 2.  During the course of the evening and older guy with cowboy hat and boots asked us our names, he said that he wrote songs and appeared to be writing one then.

  He thanked us and didn't say anything else, but you never know, they next big country and western hit could have our names in the lyrics!

We noticed a lot of games machines in the bar and one of them was based on the theme of hunting - shooting elk, moose etc.  It seems that this is a big part of the national psyche.  We had noticed a couple of weeks earlier, a group of young men on our train from Toronto.  It dropped them in the middle of nowhere, and we gathered that they were on a hunting weekend.  Having spent two weeks in the Rockies, where the animals are really cared for and protected, we have trouble understanding why in other parts of Canada, endangered animals such as Grizzly bears are hunted.