Lake day at Jasper

Lake day at Jasper An important take-away from this day was that 9.57am Jasper Sky tram departs exactly at 9.57am and doesn’t wait the extra minute it takes you to get there at 9.58am. We learnt it the hard way, which meant a slight change of plans. We rebooked our tickets for 7.24pm and went to Pyramid lake as the kids wanted to swim in a lake with a beach. While the lake set at the foot of the Pyramid mountain was beautiful it didn’t make the cut for a beach or clear water to swim in for the kids and so Kahan suggested we go to lake Anette where we had stopped on our biking expedition the previous day and boy was he right! The next few hours were spent soaking in the endless scenery of Lake Anette and it’s neighboring lake Edith. The kids got their fair share of swimming in the frigid waters, played 🏈 football, Reeva mostly made sand mountains, I got my 5K run in and Anu got her daily meditation in. The colorful piece of football 🏈 earned at Dave and Busters in Phoenix deserves an honorable mention here as it was an important highlight of the boys’ trip and went with them everywhere and was played with at every place imaginable including parking lots, meadows, lakes, by the shops etc. We enjoyed a picnic lunch with bowls and smoothies picked up from Freshii thanks to Chinmay, Varun and Parishi. After a shower stop at the room for the 3 kids, a quick coffee stop at the really cool Snowdome Adromeda coffee shop that Parishi took me to we were at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge set on beautiful Lake Beauvert. It was love at first sight with this resort- everything from the expansive welcoming lobby to the spread out cabins, the calm and serene outdoors, the kayaks sailing on the lake- it was already on all of our vision boards for the future sooner rather than later. We unanimously agreed this was the best of the 3 Fairmonts we had visited on this trip. The planetarium was in the Fairmont and the 4.45pm tour turned out to be our private exclusive tour! The Jasper dark sky preserve show was fascinating and put the feeling of our almost non-existent existence into the forefront in this massive Universe where our Earth 🌎 is merely a pale blue dot! We got some great Astronomy lessons on the Auroras and the solar flares that cause them while viewing them in the telescope from our guide Terry who is studying Astrophysics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and working at the Planetarium. The kids enjoyed the hands-on lessons in how different gases in test-tubes refract different wavelengths of light imparting the vivid green (from Oxygen) and purple (from the Helium). We got to hold a piece of meteor from Mars and compare it to a regular stone learning the differences between the 2 and how to tell them apart. Isn’t learning essentially embedded in these travels, not just for the kids but for anyone curious enough to learn about the world we inhabit, the people we co-habit it with and the space and galaxies beyond. A quick ice-cream stop at Grandma’s in town that sells hand-made ice-creams we were well in time for our 7.24pm “flight” at the Jasper Tram Station. The 7.5 minute tram ride up to the top gave us some of the most breathtaking views of the Rocky peaks and the lakes Edith, Anette as well as the Valley of the five lakes which were pointed out to us in the tram. The late dinner at the Earl’s restaurant was mostly appetizing especially the Kung Pao vegetables and rice that Anu had ordered and the Tofu Sushi tacos 🌮.