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

Had my normal breakfast and Folgers instant coffee to go. It was mostly cloudy and 41° (5°C). We left at 8:31 in the Jeep and headed towards Maligne Lake.

Shortly after turning onto the road to Maligne Lake, we came across a bull elk that was bugling and its breath was visible — a great photo op. Unfortunately, he was moving through some sparse forest, and we weren't able to get any good images of him.

We turned around just beyond Medicine Lake because there was solid cloud cover and the light was low.

We returned to Whistler's Campground and stopped to photograph a bull elk on a nice hill right by the road. He was bugling too occasionally (left).

We returned to the RV around 11:50, then prepped the RV to move. J went to upgrade us to an electric site because we hadn't been getting much solar-electric power lately and our house batteries were getting low. J also asked the friendly ranger guy at the booth where to find bighorn rams, and got some good tips. While J was doing that, I de-tilted the solar-electric panels. We left at 12:22 with me in the RV and J following in the Jeep.

We reached Site 59J, and got leveled and plugged into electricity by 12:35. Had my regular lunch while downloading images from this morning. Edited images and moved some older images to an external hard drive to free up space on my laptop. Prepped laundry. We left around 2:20 in the Jeep.
We went to the Snowdome Laundromat and Internet Cafe in Jasper townsite around 2:30 to do some laundry. I worked up a blog entry while doing the laundry. We left at 4:20.

We returned to the RV at 4:30 and put away some laundry before leaving at 4:50 in the Jeep.

We went to Old Fort Point, just south of Jasper townsite, to look for bighorn rams. We started to hike up the hill to where the bighorn rams were reported to be, and one ram came up over the top of the hill and walked down the hill right by us. I wasn't prepared for such a close approach, and I could only take some head shots as he went by. Fortunately, I captured a really nice image (left). :) We kept heading up the hill to look for more rams, and didn't find any. We waited around a bit, then started heading down the hill. The same ram was now making his way back up the hill, and this time he stopped part way up and we were able to spend some quality time with him. We left around 6:25.
We were going to head northeast on Ablerta-93 to look for elk northeast of town, and came across four bull elk right near town. One was with a harem of females, and the other three were hanging out on the other side of the road. I photographed the big guy with the harem, and he was nice enough to demonstrate the flehmen response while posing nicely and urinating (below left). The flehmen response is a particular type of curling of the upper lip to facilitate the transfer of pheromones and other scents to their vomeronasal organ. In males, it's usually associated with mating season because it helps them sense when females are ready to mate. Also during the rut, bull elk urinate on the ground and then rub their antlers in the sexy scent to help attract females. After he was done posing for me, he started to walk slowly towards me, and I left because there weren't many cars to get behind if he thought I was encroaching on his girls.


As I was heading back to the other three bulls, I saw that two of them had started fighting. I had to wait for some traffic to go by, and I was quite anxious to get into position to start photographing the fight before it ended. I made it across the road and started photographing the fight (above right). The bulls weren't going at it too seriously, but the diffuse light was good for photography. After they stopped fighting, the victor went to the top of a nearby hill and posed nicely. Then the loser came and stood just down the hill from the victor, and I wished I had my 100-400 at the ready so I could have captured the two in a perfect location. We left at 7:11.

We returned to the RV around 7:20. I downloaded images from the afternoon, put away more laundry, and edited images in iView while J finished dinner.

Had dinner at 8:07 of J's pecan-crusted pork chops, Idahoan Loaded Baked mashed potatoes, and green beans. I started to prep the dishes while J showered. Then I showered and did the dishes.

I looked into Caig Laboratories DeoxIT, a product that came highly recommended by Tioga George, a full-time RVer who has an interesting blog. Actually, Tioga George recommends DeoxIT Gold, but I think we need the regular DeoxIT to clean the contacts on our breakaway switch and brake system unbilical cord followed by DeoxIT Shield to protect the contacts in their "severe environment."