The Icefields Parkway
I will confess to being extremely skeptical of the beauty along the legendary Icefields Parkway, and I was blown away. The Canadians know it's a hefty claim to make and they recognize that. Upon entering the road, the ranger hands you a map, bearing the question in bold: “The Most Beautiful Road? Really?” But sure enough, every single recommended viewpoint or attraction or trailhead was utterly incredible.
At 230 kilometers in length, the Parkway snakes around pristine lakes, under enormous crags, alongside roaring waterfalls, and beside enormous icefields.
Upon my insistence, we stopped to gawk at Mts. Hardisty, Kerkeslin, and Edith Cavell, some of the most prominent peaks in that stretch. 
The Athabasca Falls (Stoney for “the place where the bulrushes grow”) were incredible, as large waterfalls usually are. Hearing the roar of the falls and feeling the spray of mist on our faces made me nostalgic for Niagara Falls. 
It was amazing seeing how far the falls had receded, and the surprising amount of life that flourishes in the turbulent waterfall. Even more unbelievable was that while it is natural for fish to flourish in the river after a waterfall, it is essentially impossible for fish to thrive in the river preceding one, especially one such as these falls. Yet there is one type of fish that manages this daunting task; how the species ever came to be in that portion of the river is a mystery to this day.At Horseshoe Lake, scores of locals were thronging the cliffs along either side, waiting to jump into the glorious water. 
The Icefield Centre along the Parkway was mainly built in 1996, and it showed. The exhibits were extremely informative and quite interactive—those that worked were, anyway—but the language regarding the disastrous effect of global warming on the recession of the icefields (the Columbia Icefield in particular)--was vague, indecisive, and out-and-out misleading. As the daughter of an earth scientist, I know these statements are wrong, but I digress.
The Columbia Icefield itself is awe-inspiring, if upsetting. Its sheer size, even after the toll humans have taken on it, demands its own climate. That portion of the road is quite chilly, the New Englander will concede.
I learned way more about glaciers than I thought possible that day.
For instance, different parts of the glacier move at different speeds. The ice on the top of the glacier will get to the bottom much sooner than the ice at the bottom because of the massive amount of friction it creates against the rock.
With ice core samples from the Icefield, scientists can ascertain how much pollen was in the air x number of years ago, and from it conjecture about the vegetation, the level of the glacier, and the surrounding plant life.
One cool side fact was that apparently previous ice core samples have shown layers of peat (essentially plant matter) and layers of ice, interspersed with layers of ash. These layers of ash came from volcanic eruptions—one from Mount Mazama, the volcano that created Crater Lake, and one from Mt. St. Helens—and we had just visited both of those places! The dispersal of volcanic ash in the atmosphere is incredible, yet worrying. Just think what this means for the world every time we endure another Icelandic volcanic eruption.
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