Columbia Icefields Parkway – The tenth day of our baby boomer tour of western Canada brought us to the Columbia Icefields Parkway in the Canadian Rockies.

This stunningly beautiful scenic drive is 230 km (140 mi) long and stretches from Jasper down near the city of Banff.

The well maintained two-lane road provides seemingly infinite mountain panoramas and will take you alongside countless glaciers, including the namesake Columbia Icefields.

As you can see from our photograph, we encountered a day of rain and this particular photograph was one of the best we could muster.

However, another wonderful feature of this parkway is the great likelihood that you will encounter wildlife along the way. Here is a photograph of a grizzly bear that we came upon during our drive

I had to fiddle with this photograph a bit to make him stand out from the background on our rainy day, but imagine this behemoth coming upon you during a hike.  YIKES!

When bear sightings occur along the Icefields Parkway, you wouldn’t believe the traffic jams that occur with people wildly grabbing for their cameras.

Well, there’s much more to tell, but I will save it for our feature article when we get home.

Stay tuned, tomorrow is a walk upon the massive Athabasca Glacier.  We can’t wait!