Pine Bungalows

Check in at the front desk and the mountains do the rest. Pine Bungalows is a cluster of cabins and lodge rooms on 11 acres beside the Athabasca River, two kilometres from Jasper townsite. It began in 1936, when Colonel Thomas Walkeden built fifty cabins at Cottonwood Creek; the Defoort and Wasuita families ran it through the decades that followed, and a 2008 remodel gave the current cabins their knotty pine interiors and heated bathroom floors. Cabins sleep two to ten across categories from King and East to River Front and Heritage Family, most with full kitchens, gas fireplaces and a private fire pit. None has a television or wifi. The Lodge and Front Desk rooms keep the modern conveniences instead: TV, wifi, balcony, mini-fridge. A restaurant called Kumama serves breakfast through dinner, and the on-site canteen stocks produce, wine and pre-made meals for cabin kitchens. You can hear the river from several of the cabins, and elk are known to wander right up to the windows. A communal fire pit south of the Lodge is lit nightly. Check-in runs from 4pm. It sits inside a Dark Sky Preserve, close enough to town for dinner out, far enough for quiet.