After 2 full days in Jasper National park we have decided that everything is bigger and closer here. During a morning drive we were lucky enough to observe, from the safety of our car, a big black bear feasting on ripe berries on the side of the road. He paid no heed to us snapping away with our camera not 5 feet away, his only concern was to make sure he got all the berries off each bush he happened by. We encountered a few more bears having their morning feast on our way to Moab Lake; we headed there because it was a spot on the map. A short 0.2k jaunt to the lake through a gauntlet of hungry mosquitoes and we were nearly face to face with a giant bull moose. Neither of us expected to encounter the other so suddenly, but after a moment of staring at each other the moose resumed his morning meal. He must have found a great patch of food because he was reaching down into the water so far that we could no longer see his eyes. He even took a moment to blow some bubbles as he searched for food. The next morning we happened upon 2 of the largest elk we have seen thus far. The rack of antlers on each of them was absolutely amazing, they must have been 3 feet high and possibly 4 feet wide! None of us can understand how these animals can maneuver through the forest with antlers this large, but somehow they manage to appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. And this bigger and closer post would not be complete without a mention of the mosquitoes. We happen to be in Jasper for one of the worst mosquito seasons in local memory. The hoards of mosquitoes are larger and much closer than any of us would like, but we can’t really complain about being bothered by the mozzies after seeing what the poor bears have to put up with.
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