photos...

Yesterday, Sunday, was nice and sunny, so I went driving around Jasper and took a bunch of photos with my new digital camera...

the Athabasca River:


Sunwapta Falls:

more photos...

Whistlers Mountain, which you can take a tramway up to the top:

some totem poles in front of a restaurant:

Osprey Lake:

Horseshoe Lake:

video filmed on Kauai

I was watching TV here in Jasper the other night, and happened to see this video (click the subject line for the link). It's filmed in and around the little town of Hanalei, on the north shore of Kauai, which I was camping a few miles from when I was in Hawaii back in April. It's actually the last stop on the way to the Na Pali coast and is a really cute little town. Notice the Bubba Burgers restaurant, I ate there a few times. And the dock that the girls are all jumping off is in Hanalei Bay, where I went to the beach just about every day. I think the scenery in the very beginning is the Kalalau Valley, or at least somewhere on the Na Pali coast. Basically I recognize just about everything in the video...(Didn't see the cute girl riding around on a bike, though.)

new Jasper photos

Here are some pics from today, when a couple carloads of us from employee housing here went out to Maligne Canyon and Medicine Lake:

still hanging out in Jasper

Nothing too exciting to report here lately. I'm still in Jasper, Alberta, working for Mountain Park Lodges and living in employee housing. The job is going okay, although I'm getting a bit bored of it and it's already getting a little chilly around here. Plus it's been rather wet lately, so it's not ideal for working outside all day. But it's not intolerable either so I'm still hanging in there with it, and if it were just to clear up and get sunny then it would be fine. So I can still hope that it will work out okay for the next month or so. Technically the job goes through October 15th, when they officially surrender the plants to the cold, at which time I might have the possibility of switching over to another department such as maintenance or housekeeping. But at this point I'm wondering if I'll even be able to do the job through mid-October. So things are kind of a day-at-a-time at this point.

A new group of employees arrived, about 10 people all from Brazil, other than one Chilean. They were learning English in Vancouver for 3 months and then work here for 3 months. They're a lively group of folks and all pretty nice so it's good to have them around. It's a pretty all-around international crowd here, I'm the only American I've met working in Jasper (other than some tourists), and there aren't even that many Canadians. Lots of Australians and Asians. So it keeps things a little more interesting to have different types of folks around.

In other news, there really isn't any other news. Last weekend I didn't get around to doing any hiking or anything, since I was focused on getting my taxes ready to send off to my tax preparer back in Portland. Now that's finally done, and is a big relief. I'm just praying I get some money back rather than owe (obviously), but I have no idea. It's Saturday today and I have the weekend off as usual, but not sure if I'll get out there and do much since the weather is looking fairly miserable again, cloudy and pretty cold. But there is a hot springs resort less than an hour away, still inside Jasper Nat'l Park, that I've been wanting to check out, so that would be a good thing to do on a funky day. I'll just see what I'm feeling like after trying to tackle a little writing on my India travel book this morning. Well that's really all for now folks, so I guess I'll just wait to write here again until something vaguely eventful happens.

PS. I'm still unable to send picture messages from my phone (although I can send text messages without a picture), so I'm unable to get the photos I've taken on my phone sent to my email, so that I can post them. Apparently it's a problem of some sort with the cell phone tower here, plus the fact that I'm using a non-Canadian phone. But I'll keep them on my phone for now and hopefully be able to send them and then post them here whenever I make a trip away from here at some point, since I was able to send pictures from nearby Banff. And there's a town at the edge of the park, east of here on the way to Edmonton, that's supposed to be a good place to go shopping at lower prices than here in Jasper, so if I go there at some point hopefully it will work to send photos while I'm there.