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July 23 Yellowhead Lake

It rained on and off all night again, but not as hard as it did two nights ago. Yet again we took time to dry out the rain fly. Cory kept running around the campsite trying to find sun. Water wasn't available in this site so the girls and I went down to the green river and filtered some water. It tasted so good and was so cold. Sheesh-everything was cold. The temperature is still pretty low and chilly. We're all wearing pants and both of our jackets to stay warm. A Canadian Man came to talk to us today when he saw our Utah license plate. We haven't seen another Utah plate since leaving Montana. He just returned from a trip to Utah. He said, "I always say when God created the Earth he spent a lot of his time creating Banff and Jasper. It's so beautiful, but when he was finished he had a lot of beauty left over and dumped it out in Southern Utah." It felt good to laugh with him. We do live in a beautiful place, but seriously come to Banff it's worth it.

              Chloe and Zella filtering our water. The water tasted so clean, crisp and cold.
Our view once again, but with the sun. I think I took about 50 pictures. Awe.
Last one of the view downstream
So this is actually from our hike last night,but I forgot to include it
Because what hike isn't complete without riding a tree like a bull
This silly jumping picture too. Notice Cory sporting Chloe's jacket on his head
One of our main goals of this trip was to show our kids glaciers since scientists say most of the glaciers will melt in the next ten years. My little platform--please consume less. Please consume less! We have seen so many glaciers the past couple of days and most of them too far to walk to. A common exclamation in our car is--LOOK!!! A glacier!! They are so magnificent with their blue tints. We met a small family today at Athabasca Glacier--one you could actually hike to. Isaak really wanted to touch it until we read a story about a 9 year old playing on the glacier and then falling into a fissure and dying of hypothermia. Just FYI the last three rescue attempts on the glacier were unsuccessful so needless to say we didn't walk on it, but enjoyed hiking up to it and feeling the glacial wind blowing down the mountain. Glacial wind is chilly and makes children whine that it's too cold to hike so beware!
The hike up and Cory is almost always carrying somebody
We made it to the glacier despite glacial winds. I held Zelly's feet the whole time because her shoes fell off while we were hiking. We recovered both on the way down!
When you hike to a glacier you should do a portrait and a landscape
Tundra views from near the Glacier
Runoff from the glacier
The Athabasca Glacier widescreen. The Athabasca Glacier is known as one of the six primary toes of the Columbia Icefield. The glacier recedes about 5 metres a year which is about 16 feet. It is dramatically smaller than it was even in the 1990's. They have markers all the way up that shows where it was about every 10-15 years. Currently its about 3.7 miles long and about 300-980 feet thick.
One last picture of the tundra around the glacier
The family we talked to happened to be from Portland, Oregon. They were on a year long. They'd been out since September. We stared chatting. We dream of doing a year long and this was kind of a trial to see how it would go. They said after their first six months they sat down and thought about throwing in the towel. It was hard and stressful. I nodded. We talked about being okay with doing less and not seeing everything. Seeing what you see and being okay about that. They also talked about how the highs were really high which reminded me about some of the experiences we'd already had were I felt like my heart was so full it might just burst with confetti happiness. But seriously there have been some highs. But they mentioned the lows are low and hard. But in time they've gotten to now themselves better and are so happy they stuck it out. They will be finished in about two months. I wish we would have gotten their names. I really liked them a lot. There words spoke true to me and almost prophetic actually.  
Athabasca Falls in Jasper National Park
I took a progression of pictures to try and capture the whole effect


Just past the falls the water courses through rocks creating these amazing canyons on both sides. The waterfall isn't known for it's height, but in the copious amount of water that flows over the rocks of the falls. 
A cavern made of limestone near the end where a small stream of water sneaks through to the other side to lead into a canyon that flows out downstream.
Trying to capture a shot of the entire falls
My favorite selfie ever. Chloe touched the screen and added a postage stamp of that guy smiling at us. It cracks me up every single time I see it. It actually took me a few minutes to get it off my screen. I have several pictures with fun post stamps.
My first bear that I've ever seen. It was a baby black bear eating berries. I shouldn't have stopped to take a pictur.e I knew it was dangerous, but some other tourists were as stupid as me and I figured I could outrun most of them:)
In Jasper after a grocery stop and showing off their kinder eggs. The groceries were double the price since we were in Jasper. I paid $10 for an itty bitty watermelon. They are actually pretty expensive in Canada-Maybe because they ship so far? 

We celebrated Isaak's half birthday by getting everyone another kinder surprise egg and getting rained on some more. The temperature was still cold and cloudy with threatening rain. We were in the mountains and hotels in Banff are ridiculously expensive so we knew we were sticking it out and off to camp another night in the cold. We found a spot relatively quickly as Mount Robson was only about twenty minutes from Jasper. We picked the first campground because there was a lull in the rain. And don't let the pictures fool you it was quite chilly. We all should've been wearing jackets. 
We got the tent set up just before a short rainstorm, but then the rain subsided and we were able to make dinner without rain and go on a hike around the lake. Mount Yellowhead towered over our campground which was at Yellowhead Lake. 
I wish it was warmer because the beach was amazing. The kids loved playing in the sand. Notice we are all wearing double coats. It's seriously barely 50 degrees with wind chill.

Yellowhead Mountain Surface Elevation 3635 feet Canadian Rockies



Down by Yellowhead lake throwing rocks. The original name of the Lake given by the Overlanders was Dung Lake in 1863. I think Yellowhead is a much prettier name which is acquired in 1872

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