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Prepare yourself for a slightly long read.. (grab a cuppa!) We got up at 4am and checked out of our apartment at 5:30am, ready for our road trip to Jasper! The weather was good for the first part, and the drive was pretty straight forward along the windy highway with some lovely scenery. We stopped off at a place called Hope to stretch our legs for 15 minutes, then set off again. As we were edging up towards the mountainous roads, we saw signs saying our route had compact snow, and it's advised that you should carry snow tyres or chains between October and the end of April in these areas. Our tyres are all-season but certainly not snow tyres, and we had no chains (will invest in some). The weather got really bad as we hit a blizzard, the snow was settling so fast. Luckily we followed a snowplow through part of the road, but for about an hour we had extremely bad driving conditions, poor visibility, with Jacob trying his best to keep the tyres within the tracks made by other cars, which were rapidly dusted with snow again. It was a very tense hour and we were both just hoping for things to improve.
Eventually, visability improved; still with snow, but we felt more at ease and stopped at a town called Merritt, in the Nicola Valley of BC. It was quite an interesting place with lots of ranches and had an Indian feel to it. Here, we got gas and topped up the oil and engine coolant as the engine light came on (though it turned out to be fuel related), then we set off again, hoping that there would be no more snow ahead, as by this time we had been on the road for about 5 hours and were already delayed by an hour.
Ninety kilometres on, we decided to stop at Kamloops for some lunch as it was the biggest town we'd be at for a long while. We grabbed a 'White Spot' drive thru and fuelled up the tank (ours and the cars!) Onwards we went.. our next stop was 2 hours away at Clearwater. It started to feel very chilly at this point, but it was refreshing as we'd been in the car for so long. This was our last stop before we got to Jasper!
The drive from here on was pretty amazing. The views around us were fantastic, with pretty lakes, rivers and streams running alongside the road and mountains towering all around us. We passed a beautiful area where the lake was completely frozen over, with the backdrop of grey and snow covered mountains. We also got to see three black bears on the way! A mother and her two cubs - amazing. We saw lots of other wildlife too, including mountain sheep, wild horses, cows and elk!
At 6pm, about 12 hours after setting off from Vancouver, we arrived at Chateau Jasper! This is where we were staying for the night. We got our keys and put our things in the room, then went for a stroll around the town of Jasper. There were lots of elk along the pavements, and the buildings here are very ski-lodge like, which I like. After exploring a little and getting some easy to make soup for dinner, we settled down for bed - super tired after a very long drive!
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