Monday, May 24, 2010

Today we went up the Jasper Tramway. The Base Camp is at elevation 1000 feet. The Upper Camp is at elevation 2000 feet. The mountain is called Whistler Mountain for the noise the hoary marmot makes. At the very top we are actually in a cloud with a little bit of snow flurries. Most of the employees here are very young adults from Alberta,Canada, Nova Scotia, New Zealand and Australia. There are just 2 trams in a balanced pulley system; they have to operate together. It wouldn't work for a ski slope because hardly anybody could get to the top fast enough. We can see quite far. There is a heart-shaped lake below and we watched a Canadian Northern train with many, many double stacked cars pull into the station in Jasper. Daddy ordered eggs, sausage and toast for breakfast. I had a blueberry muffin and coffee. Then we watched the clouds roll in and block out the lower camp. Most of the year it is very clear up here, except when the seasons are changing- which is now.
We are driving to Grande Cache to spend the night. On the way we will stop at Wal -Mart in Hinton. As we left the Tramway we saw 2 large elk on the side of the road eating. Then we saw 2 huge bull moose on the Yellowhead Highway between Jasper and Hinton. After Hinton we are on rout #40 which is the Bighorn Highway.
Grande Cache(pronounced CASH) is named for the cabins on stilts that were built here in the late 1800s. The word cache is French and means large storage space. Historically, it was used as a staging area for the fur trappers and native Indians where they left from to trap animals in what is now called Willmore Wilderness Park. In 1969 it was established as a town by the McIntyre Porcupine Coal, LTD. company. We stayed at the Grande Cache Municipal Campground which was very private and wooded. Daddy washed the RV and car by hand. The weather was absolutely gorgeous.