Another moving day.
This one from Cranbrook, British Columbia to Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. It was 169.8 miles (68,705.6 total) of
delightful driving. The roads were nice
with only a few hills and they had passing lanes, so everyone was happy. The Canadian Rockies have some of the most
amazing scenery we have seen driving.
As we passed through the small town of Radium Hot Springs,
there was a sign indicating Big Horn Sheep crossing. I thought "sure, let me slow down because that'll
happen". You guessed it - right
down the center of the road in the middle of town!
Radium Springs looked very interesting. Next time we will plan a stop.
Our plan was to spend 11 days (possibly more?) in the Canadian National Parks, so an annual pass was in order. At
$136.80 it seemed a little steep to me, but I only had to think about it once
instead of each day. A lot of this area, in Alberta, is in the National Park System requiring the pass, so it was a must. We were staying in Banff, but adjoining it
was; Jasper (north), Yoho (west), Glacier (different from Glacier in the US)
and Mount Revelstoke (west of Yoho) and Kootenay (south). From the park gate we could see the road
passed through a narrow slot in the rock - I don't think they will widen this
road anytime soon!
We saw another sign that said no stopping on the road for bear
watching. This time we were fully
expecting to see bears. Without
stopping it was difficult to get a good picture, but you can see it - a pretty
sizable black bear right along the roadside.
Everywhere we looked there was amazing scenery! Snow capped mountains, steep valleys,
rushing water, water falls and glaciers kept begging for me to pull the coach
over for some better picture taking, but we kept on.
Highway 93 joined the Trans-Canada Highway for the last 20
miles into Lake Louise and we saw the strangest looking bridges. They were covered with soil and foliage. Joani speculated they must allow animals to
safely get from one side of the highway to the other. Later in the information center we found she was exactly right!
The Village of Lake Louise specifically catered to tourism, so there were a lot of restaurants and shops and a nice Visitor's Center and not a lot of anything else except for, of course, our campground. The campground was divided into two sections hard sided and soft sided. The soft sided section was enclosed with electric fencing to keep bears out. In the hard sided section you were expected to keep a watch for bears and not antagonize them.
We hit the road as soon as we were set up. We wanted to get familiar with the area as quickly as possible. Lake Louise was only a few miles away.
The Bow River ran right by the campground.
The color of the water varied drastically depending on the direction and intensity of the sun.
The color came alive if the water was between your eye and the sun.
Late afternoon happened to be their busiest time of day, so we just took a quick look and moved on to Lake Moraine. Both lakes were absolutely beautiful. The color was a shocking shade of blue created by the glacial flour in the water and the reflection of the high altitude blue sky. There will be a lot to explore, but already we can see we made the right choice in visiting the Canadian Rockies!
Lake Moraine was amazing when the sun broke through.
The river followed us all the way back to our campsite.
I thought these were Prairie Dogs, but they are actually Colombian Ground Squirrels.
The ground squirrel chirps drive Sam crazy!
No comments:
Post a Comment