Day 26 • Valemount to Golden • 288 mi

Well, here it is, the reason I just did 400 miles east: Jasper and Banff National Parks.

I was last in Jasper about 15 years ago in the back of a rental car.

It is much improved on one cylinder and two wheels.

The Icefields Parkway, or Highway 93, runs 140 mi from the town of Jasper to Lake Louise in Banff NP.

About halfway down is the Columbia Icefield, a 125 sq mi pack of ice. From the road, it is most obvious as the Athabasca Glacier.

Continue on down the road, and the mountains just get bigger.

125 mi goes extremely slowly up here, especially when you want to stop every quarter mile. I'm pretty sure I could have spent weeks.

But there aren't many places to stay in major national parks on a summer weekend, so we had to push on.

We made Lake Louise around 8pm, but with nowhere to stay, we dropped out of Banff into Golden, BC. It was an utter shame to run Yoho National Park at night.

We arrived at Golden at around 11:30pm, and after checking around 8 hotels, found one of the last rooms available.

Total mileage: 288 mi
Trip mileage: 4,520 mi