We drove up the Icefields Parkway into Jasper National Park, a very wild and woolly place of mountains, glaciers and stunning vistas.
I've long wanted to camp at the Icefield itself, and this time I did so, pitching the tent near the Athabasca Glacier, which spills dramatically off the Icefield. Great grey clouds built up into storms over the Icefield, then funneled down across the glaciers to our tent.
When I was four, my parents took me out onto the Athabasca Glacier in a little snow cat. I vividly remember the driver stopping the cat, swinging open the door over a huge blue-black yawning chasm and saying, "Take a look at that crevasse!"

It was the coolest thing EVER.

In the photo below, the little vehicle on top is what we took out onto the glacier. Now they use the big snow coach pictured below it.