July 4, 2017 Day 17 Tuesday Canmore Alberta to Revelstoke British Columbia

Happy 4^th of July from Canada.    We popped out of bed at 7:00, ready to see a beautiful totally blue sky day.  We checked out of our cozy AirBnB, and hit the road.

Patti had been researching where the Parks Canada Red chairs were and was determined we would find one of the sets in Banff Park.  The most accessible ones were on the Bow Valley Parkway that we had driven the day before, at the Muleshoe picnic area.  As we arrived there, some of the maintenance crew were walking up a hill and when Patti asked where the red chairs were, they all in unison pointed us to them. As we walked over and posed to take a photo, the mosquitos immediately found us.  The worst we had experienced the whole trip.  We snapped one picture and hoped for the best.  We then rushed up the path and spent the next 15 minutes swatting and killing those who managed to ride with us into our car. We saw the maintenance crew had stopped their work and were busy putting on insect repellant. Yikes!  We were both glad that we had not struggled with such bad bugs during the rest of our trip.

We quickly moved over to the Lake Louise Area, this time at 9:20 rather than afternoon.  But to no avail.  The parking lots were already full and we again could not get into the visitor center.  We both voted, “let’s bail and get out of here”.  Goodbye Lake Louise and Banff. 

The remainder of the day would be in less traveled (by far) National Parks.   The first one would be Yoho National Park, which was right across the continental divide into British Columbia.   The drive into the park was grand.  More amazing, beautiful, lovely mountains!  We are really experiencing that we are on The Backbone of the Rockies trip.

One of the cool things here was a couple of train spiral tunnels.  The grade here was so step it was incredibly hard to take trains down the grade.  Some innovative engineers designed a series of tunnels that spiraled inside the mountain and then come out many feet lower.  We were not able to watch a train go through this today, but saw it 8 years ago on a previous trip.  We do enjoy learning about railroad history.

A ways into the park is the most famous feature the Takawkaw Falls.  This translated from Cree to man “It is magnificent” and it is!   We had to drive a number of miles into the park (again with breathtaking views at every turn). Finally, we reached the parking area for the falls. Every few steps we would stop to take another picture.  Wow! Mountains, waterfalls, lovely views!

Eventually, we were very close to the falls.  But, where were the Red Chairs?  Then we saw them.  Quickly we went over to take our photos.  Often the chairs are placed facing a great view, but this time they were set up so that the waterfalls were in the back ground.  Lovely!!!! Patti set the timer on the camera, and snap, photo taken.

Then we walked closer and closer. These falls are very powerful.  In length they were more than 3 times the height of Niagara Falls.  The rush of the water was so loud.  Very dramatic!  We both struggled to capture the falls in photos and videos.  A real treat! More pictures on the way back to our car and out of the park.

This was a day that not only featured spectacular scenery but we were also able to see wildlife.  A mule deer doe crossed in front of us and up a slope. Then later, we found two Mountain Sheep that allowed us to get quite close.  We watched them for quite a while before needing to be back on the road, leaving the animals to be viewed by others who had stopped.

Then we left the park and had lunch in Golden BC at truck stop.  Good old country cooking.  We enjoyed the display of partiers left over from Canada Day celebration a couple of days back.  Very classy!

We continued up the valley before we turned and crossed to go up into Glacier National Park (the Canadian one, no the American one which is a couple hundred miles to the Southeast.).  We kept seeing these amazing snow-capped mountains all around us.  We began to run into construction, but it was hard to complain, because we were so loving the views.

We stopped at Rogers Pass where we stopped at the visitor’s Center for the park.  We watched a couple of great videos about protecting yourself from bear attacks, and also the “War on Snow” dealing with keeping the train tracks and highways clear from avalanches. In this area they had received 65 feet of snow in the course of this past winter.  You could see the avalanche paths down the mountains, one right after another.  The slopes were very steep.  On the way up to the pass, we had traveled through many snow sheds.  We had seen these constructions before but only protecting train tracks from avalanches.  This was the first we had seen it for protecting a road.

We were also interested in learning that was in this park where the spot of mountain climbing originated in Canada.  Patti got her photo taken with a replica pair of pants worn by mountaineer pioneer,  Georgia , niece of Georgia O’Keefe (one of our favorite artists). She maintained that you could not climb mountains in a skirt and needed to wear proper pants.

We also saw some of the artillery that is used to blast away at the snow, trying to preempt an avalanche.  We were very impressed with the power and the danger of these tons of snow roaring down mountains, which we saw in the video.

In Glacier Park, there was also a lovely board work path through an old growth cedar and hemlock forest.  These trees were hundreds of years old, and it was a very quiet lovely spot to walk. Not only were there amazing old tress, but other plants were bathed in a beautiful light and shadow pattern.  AND we found the next set of Red Chairs.  Yay!  We are becoming Red Chair expert finders.

We got back on the road and Dick made a comment about how nice it was to have the road clear with no other traffic.  Minutes later, we ground to halt which would result in our taking over an hour to drive the next 3 miles.  At least, while we waited we could enjoy both the mountain scenery and the wonderful wildflowers by the side of the road.

Eventually we found out there had been an accident and so traffic was now only one lane on these busy highway.  The would let only ten cars through, and then had to wait while ten cars went the other way.  When we finally reached the “accident”, we found it was a track trailer truck filled with meat which had caught on fire and burned to the road.  You could smell the cooked meat as we drove by.  It smelled like a BBQ.  We were astounded to watch as traffic the other direction was backed up for 15 miles as they waited to get through.  We had thought we might take another little hike this afternoon, but decided to just get out of the area as quickly as we could.

And so we arrived at our last AirBnB of the trip:  Valley Retreat BnB in Revelstoke British Columbia.  This was a charming, newly renovated 6 bedroom BnB owned by a young man named Ryan.   He was a fellow history major, same as us.  And decided to move to this area and start a BnB.  He has been highly successful and is a great host.   We didn't meet him until later in the evening because he was stuck in that same traffic jam that had caught us.  He had left great instructions for checking in, and so we were able to find out lovely room and take a good nap before heading into town for dinner.

We walked around the downtown area of this cute tourist town, and eventually got some takeout Chines and brought it to the Grizzly Square for Their Summer Musical festival  This town is able to book 70 bands to play 66 evenings in a row of free public musk.  Tonight’s band played bluegrass and traditional country music.  We enjoyed hearing them, and especially enjoyed watching the enthusiastic children dancing their hearts out. We were again struck by the nice atmosphere watch children when they could run, dance and play without having their parents supervision and watchful eye at every moment.

Back to the AirBnB where we met some of the other guests, and met an interesting guy who was dropping off huckleberries for Ryan.  He talked with us about his life as a professional mushroom and fruit picker . Apparently, this is quite a business and cottage industry. He told us that in some cases, a company would hire a whole small down to pick mushrooms.  Some of these mushrooms would sell for 50 or $100/pound.   He offered us some of the huckleberries to eat.  Delicious!  We were thrilled to eat these great fresh, wild berries.

Another successful day in Canada.