[You may view a map of Jasper National Park in PDF format.]

Had my normal breakfast with Folgers instant coffee to go. There was no snow, contrary to the forecast, and it was 31°F (-0.5°C). I left by myself in the Jeep at 8:25.

There was an almost solid cloud layer to the south, but there was a decent amount of light.

I took Alberta-93 to Athabasca Falls, and took a quick look. Two tour busses were there disgorging tourists, so I left and took Ablerta-93A back north.

I stopped at Leech Lake to photograph the mountains reflected in the lake (far left). I used a polarizer to maximize the reflection on the water and a 2-stop graduated neutral density (ND) filter to hold back the sky. The 2-stop graduated ND was a bit too much, so I had to correct the exposure in Photoshop. Actually, for this kind of an image, taking two exposures, one for the sky and one for the foreground, and combining them in Photoshop probably would have yielded a superior image because there isn't a nice straight line that divides the too-bright area of the image from the darker area of the image.
Then I took the road to Moab Lake and stopped to photograph the Whirlpool River (above right). I also used a polarizer to maximize the reflection on the water and a 2-stop graduated neutral density (ND) filter to hold back the sky in this image, and once again, it was too much and I had to reduce the effect in Photoshop. In addition, I also used a solid ND filter to increase the exposure time to help blur the water.

I returned to the RV around 10:30 and talked with J about staying another night. We decided to stay, and I went to pay for another night in the campground. When I returned, I downloaded the images I took in the morning and did a quick edit. Then I did some computer work and took advantage of our internet connection through J's Verizon USB stick that we were sharing through our Kyocera KR2 wireless router.
Had my normal lunch and did more computer work. I started to make dinner of my chili, then processed images for the next blog entry. We left at 4:40 in the Jeep.

We went to Jasper townsite to buy some stamps at the Post Office and load up the Jeep at the Petro Canada gas station ($0.969/l).

We went to Old Fort Point at 5:13 to look for bighorn sheep rams again. We hiked up the steep hill, and found the same ram we photographed yesterday at the top of the first big hill. He was grazing and didn't mind us photographing him. I used my 500 f4, 24-105, and 100-400 to get a variety of perspectives, and he paused at appropriate intervals while grazing to look up and pose. I was able to capture some nice head shots like in the image below left. After he finished grazing, he went over to the side of the hill, laid down, and chewed his cud. He almost fell asleep as we continued to photograph him from various positions. After he was finished, he stood up and gave us some more opportunities to photograph him in his environment (below right). We left at 7:24.


We returned to the RV around 7:35. I downloaded the images I took this afternoon, then showered before I finished making dinner.

We had dinner of my chili, and it was very tasty — if I do say so myself. It was particularly good because I used a can of diced tomatoes for chili which had some jalapeño peppers in it.

I called my mother. She had a patch of squamous cell carcinoma removed from her leg today and also had the stitches removed from where the abnormal mole had been removed from her arm recently.

Had some Asbach Uralt while editing images from today.