Into Kootenay and Banff

June 25, 2011    

We awoke this morning in Dry Gulch Provincial Park Campground, near Radium Hot Springs, B.C. Canada.We had a leisurely breakfast of eggs, hash brown potatoes and pancakes.  It wasn’t a bronto-steak but we made the best of it.

We left the campground and drove along route 95 overlooking the Columbia River valley to our right.  We then turned on route 93 through Radium Hot Springs to the entrance plaza of the National Parks.  There are actually several parks accessed at the same location.  We entered Kootenay National Park.  The first mile (read that kilometer) you pass through a slit in 2 vertical rock walls not more than 30 to 40 feet (10 to 13 meters) apart where the road is built over a creek.   It’s like you kind of pour the rolling cave through this slot in the mountain.   It is really quite impressive.

Wow! That's narrow.

  We crossed Sinclair pass at 1486 meters (we need a calculator to convert that to feet).  Then we drove along the Kootenay (Kootenai) River Valley With towering mountains on the east and west sides of the valley.  The slopes are covered with fir trees up to the tree-line then bare craggy rocks and on top of that, snow.  It has been an exceptionally wet year and there is lots of water in the low-lying areas along the rivers.  The streams and rivers are flowing high and swift.  The glacial water is a beautiful color. We made good use of the turnouts, stopping various times.

One of the stops was to watch a lot of mountain goats alongside the road. They were moving fairly quickly, but only as fast as the babies could keep up. The babies were really cute.

We went on into Banff National Park, but did not go into the town of Banff.  We saw the sign saying we were entering Alberta Province; but didn’t see it until it was too late to get a photo of it.  We drove north from Castle Junction to Lake Louise.  At Lake Louise we orbited the hotel parking lot several times looking for a spot to park, but to no avail.  We left without seeing the lake(we’ll save it for another time), and stopped at a nearby picnic area for a little lunch.  After lunch we headed west on Trans Canada Highway 1 to Yoho National Park.  We stopped at Spiral Tunnels Viewpoint and watched a train run into and back out of the mountain. It went under the highway, and headed out to another spiral tunnel before completing the spirals and heading back up the hill. It was a very interesting stop. 

 Just down the road a couple of kilometers we found a campground where we are now stationary for the night in our caves.  Once again we are glad we are not in cloth caves as it is wet and cool outside