Summary of time:
· Lots of driving
· Revelstoke – a railway museum, and the golden bolt
· Columbia Mountains and Golden
· The Canadian Rockies, Glaciers
· Lake Louise
Handy hints –
§ Good maps and information about campsites
§ Good camera for the views
§ Take time to stop and enjoy the places where you are
The next dad it was another warm and sunny day, which was good for the day ahead which was around 500km of driving, and we had a time zone change before the Alberta border, or so we thought, it was actually over the Purcell Mountain range which is before we got to Golden – see comments later.
Another day of driving up and down mountains, through the valleys, passing lakes..... Although the further we drove the fewer towns/communities that were around.
Somewhere near a small place called Craigellachie, in first of the 3 sections we would drive, we saw a sign for a historic railway site, so we turned off. It was time for a coffee anyway. It was the “Golden Spike” (it was actually an iron spike) point, the point where the East and West Railways had met on Nov 7, 1885. At this site, where there was some information about the history, it gave details of a railway museum at Revelstoke, which was in the valley over the Monashee Mountains, and the end of first section of driving.
Further along the road we saw one of the Railway hotels, which were prominent places for the holiday makers, back in the early days of travelling to go on holiday. The railways built several hotels along their routes, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) had a chain called Fairmont, some of the hotels are found in Vancouver, Jasper, and Lake Louise.
As we approached Revelstoke we crossed the Columbia River (going North South) which was heading to Washington State and Oregon!
On the entrance route into the town of Revelstoke you are faced by pillars with bears on. We saw the railway museum on the other side of the track to the road, the only problem was a stationary train on the track, so we weren’t sure where the entrance was, so continued slightly further on. The train then moved, and we realised we had passed the entrance, so turned around in a car park – it’s not easy to do a 3 point turn in a 26ft RV!
We spent a couple of hours looking around the museum, learning of the dangerous conditions of building a railway across the mountains, and of the thousands of Chinese who had helped in the process, and not the best of conditions of work for the workers, who were charged rent, food and travel costs, meaning they could owe more than they earned. As well as seeing various wagons.
One commercial train passed us on the main line whilst we were at the museum, which we had seen (and passed) earlier in the day; we also passed it again further along the line! These commercial trains can have 2/3 engines at the front, possibly 1 engine further along, and possibly over 100 wagons.
It was nearly lunch time, but we decided to move on a bit further and find a park, where we could enjoy a nice view, and possibly have a short walk.
We stopped at “Skunk Cabbage Park”. It is a small picnic area with some great views and a 1.2km boardwalk through wetlands, in the valley of the Columbia Mountains. We enjoyed lunch in the sunshine, with many wasps as our companions, so it was a reasonably speedy lunch, before going along the boardwalk. Skunk Cabbage is a plant whose flowers release a rather pungent smell, we were pleased that the flowering season had passed (it flowers in Spring before the snow has completely melted). This area of wetland is part of a continental songbird monitoring program. We, unfortunately, didn’t hear any songbirds, we weren’t sure if this was due to the time of day or time of year, neither of us reckoned we would have been able to know which bird sang which song anyway.
I drove the next section, which was up higher mountains and we even saw a glacier near Roger’s Pass, whose summit for the road is at 1,330m, and is in Glacier National Park. It was amazing to see my first glacier.
The signs in the National Parks are in both French and English, as this is a bi-lingual nation, and all government bodies show information in both languages.
The road then took us down amongst mountains that were in excess of 3,000m. We kept seeing signs about Elk, but we didn’t see any.
We arrived down into the valley, which is still at quite a high elevation, and once again crossed the Columbia River (heading South North), which starts from Columbia Lake roughly 160km south from where we were. We went into Golden for afternoon tea and cake. We didn’t realise that we had crossed the time zone line yet, but whilst having our cakes, realised that the reason they were cleaning up around us was because it was almost 5pm and not 4pm as we had thought.
We didn’t linger too long as we estimated we still had about a couple of hours to drive before getting to Lake Louise, which was about 90km away, over the first set of mountains of the Rocky Mountains, on the Kicking Horse Pass whose summit for the road was at 1,647m
The road out of Golden was climbing at a reasonable rate, which fortunately is 2 lanes going uphill. We were soon into Yoho National Park. Along this section of mountains, the railway has some of its steepest climbing to do, so it does a loop inside tunnels of one mountain, crosses the valley and then does a loop inside tunnels of another mountain before coming out and reaching Field. Around this point somewhere Yoho National Park, becomes Banff National Park and you also cross the border into Alberta State.
Crossing the summit, the road does not drop too much, before you reach the Lake Louise Village Resort. We joined a queue to get into the RV site, and hoped that there would be enough space, as it was getting on towards 7pm and it would be at least another 30mins drive to another site! Also the sun was setting. We did get it, and paid for a fire permit so that we could make a campfire, it was definitely cooler up here, but dad still didn’t put his long trousers on (if you don’t know my dad, I’ll explain, when he goes on holiday he doesn’t where a watch, and if going to a warm place he wears his shorts from the moment he can (eg after landing) to the time he leaves (eg heads for the airports)).
We had amazing views of the mountains, and we moved the RV sufficiently forward so that the view from my bed (which was above the front seats) would be the tops of the mountains.
Whilst i was sorting dinner, dad made a fire, and we had dinner outside (with jumpers/fleeces on) by torchlight and firelight. We didn’t linger too long outside after dinner, but long enough to appreciate the fire. We could loads of stars, it moments like this that i wish i knew the constellations.
Next morning was an early start, our intention was to get up to Lake Louise before 9am, go for a walk, then down to the village to get internet so i could sort out my travel plans back to Vancouver for the next day or day after, and then head north towards Jasper to the Columbia Icefield to go onto the Glacier, before heading south again to get a campsite.
Lake Louise sits in a hanging valley at 1,731m, and was named in honour of Queen Victoria’s 4th daughter, who was also the wife of Lord Lorne, Governor General of Canada. The glacier melt which feeds the lake, contains a fine silt which stays suspended in the water reflecting the green rays of the spectrum.
We were up early enough, and were up at Lake Louise before 9am, and before lots of tourists, the car park was almost empty. It was an awesome moment, seeing the mountains reflected on a still surface. It was a picture perfect moment. Looking at the mountain which had the route we had intended to take up to the Russian Teahouse, by Lake Agnes, dad and i both decided that we didn’t feel like the amount of climbing involved, so decided to do the easy walk along the edge of the lake!
It was a fairly easy walk, looking back on the hotel was awesome as well. At the other side of the lake, we actually decided to continue walking and going up some of the route to the Plain of the Six Glaciers. The full walk up would be 6km, which we realised if we wanted to do all the other things today, we didn’t have time for. We got chatting to an older couple who we kept meeting on the path at various times we or they rested. They said that they had been on the Glacier trip a couple of days earlier and didn’t feel it really justified the $50 cost involved, to stand on a grey block of ice for 20 mins or so. They explained that you could park up and get really close for no cost at all.
We decided then we were not so time dependent, but still didn’t want to do the full walk, so headed back down, where the surface of the lake was now rippled. By the time we got to the front of the hotel, there were lots more tourists around, and we took pictures of the lake with its green colour, before heading down to the Village.
Whilst dad sorted out fuel for the vehicle, i looked up my options for getting back to Vancouver, which from a cost point of view was going to be by Greyhound from Banff, with a 15hr journey if i left in the around midnight on Wednesday getting in Thursday early afternoon. I booked my accommodation, but thought i’d get my ticket in Banff the next day, as there was no option to print out my ticket. We also found details about the campsites in the park, discovering that some of them had now closed for the season.
We then headed on up through Banff National Park, to find a place to stop for lunch. The drive was amazing, these great towering mountains, and glaciers creeping over the edges. By the end of the day we were getting quite blasé about seeing Glaciers.
On the drive we stopped to see the Crowfoot Glacier, which originally had 3 “fingers”, but the bottom has now disappeared, and the middle one is shrinking. On our return journey we saw a lot more of the Glacier higher up on the mountain, which it made it much more impressive.
Our next stop was at the highest road summit of 2,068m (Bow Summit the top of the valley for Banff National Park), and that is also where you can look down on Lake Peytoe (which is at 1,845m). Lake Peytoe is infamous for its unusual blue colour. It was rather breathtaking. Looking at photos it almost looks like someone has changed the colour, it doesn’t seem like it should really be that colour.
We had our lunch before we actually saw the lake, which we timed nicely as one tour bus group was leaving and left as the next group arrived. The viewing area was shared with a ground squirrel, who really didn’t mind having his photo taken; in fact he almost seemed to pose for you!
· Lots of driving
· Revelstoke – a railway museum, and the golden bolt
· Columbia Mountains and Golden
· The Canadian Rockies, Glaciers
· Lake Louise
Handy hints –
§ Good maps and information about campsites
§ Good camera for the views
§ Take time to stop and enjoy the places where you are
The next dad it was another warm and sunny day, which was good for the day ahead which was around 500km of driving, and we had a time zone change before the Alberta border, or so we thought, it was actually over the Purcell Mountain range which is before we got to Golden – see comments later.
Another day of driving up and down mountains, through the valleys, passing lakes..... Although the further we drove the fewer towns/communities that were around.
Somewhere near a small place called Craigellachie, in first of the 3 sections we would drive, we saw a sign for a historic railway site, so we turned off. It was time for a coffee anyway. It was the “Golden Spike” (it was actually an iron spike) point, the point where the East and West Railways had met on Nov 7, 1885. At this site, where there was some information about the history, it gave details of a railway museum at Revelstoke, which was in the valley over the Monashee Mountains, and the end of first section of driving.
Further along the road we saw one of the Railway hotels, which were prominent places for the holiday makers, back in the early days of travelling to go on holiday. The railways built several hotels along their routes, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) had a chain called Fairmont, some of the hotels are found in Vancouver, Jasper, and Lake Louise.
As we approached Revelstoke we crossed the Columbia River (going North South) which was heading to Washington State and Oregon!
On the entrance route into the town of Revelstoke you are faced by pillars with bears on. We saw the railway museum on the other side of the track to the road, the only problem was a stationary train on the track, so we weren’t sure where the entrance was, so continued slightly further on. The train then moved, and we realised we had passed the entrance, so turned around in a car park – it’s not easy to do a 3 point turn in a 26ft RV!
We spent a couple of hours looking around the museum, learning of the dangerous conditions of building a railway across the mountains, and of the thousands of Chinese who had helped in the process, and not the best of conditions of work for the workers, who were charged rent, food and travel costs, meaning they could owe more than they earned. As well as seeing various wagons.
One commercial train passed us on the main line whilst we were at the museum, which we had seen (and passed) earlier in the day; we also passed it again further along the line! These commercial trains can have 2/3 engines at the front, possibly 1 engine further along, and possibly over 100 wagons.
It was nearly lunch time, but we decided to move on a bit further and find a park, where we could enjoy a nice view, and possibly have a short walk.
We stopped at “Skunk Cabbage Park”. It is a small picnic area with some great views and a 1.2km boardwalk through wetlands, in the valley of the Columbia Mountains. We enjoyed lunch in the sunshine, with many wasps as our companions, so it was a reasonably speedy lunch, before going along the boardwalk. Skunk Cabbage is a plant whose flowers release a rather pungent smell, we were pleased that the flowering season had passed (it flowers in Spring before the snow has completely melted). This area of wetland is part of a continental songbird monitoring program. We, unfortunately, didn’t hear any songbirds, we weren’t sure if this was due to the time of day or time of year, neither of us reckoned we would have been able to know which bird sang which song anyway.
I drove the next section, which was up higher mountains and we even saw a glacier near Roger’s Pass, whose summit for the road is at 1,330m, and is in Glacier National Park. It was amazing to see my first glacier.
The signs in the National Parks are in both French and English, as this is a bi-lingual nation, and all government bodies show information in both languages.
The road then took us down amongst mountains that were in excess of 3,000m. We kept seeing signs about Elk, but we didn’t see any.
We arrived down into the valley, which is still at quite a high elevation, and once again crossed the Columbia River (heading South North), which starts from Columbia Lake roughly 160km south from where we were. We went into Golden for afternoon tea and cake. We didn’t realise that we had crossed the time zone line yet, but whilst having our cakes, realised that the reason they were cleaning up around us was because it was almost 5pm and not 4pm as we had thought.
We didn’t linger too long as we estimated we still had about a couple of hours to drive before getting to Lake Louise, which was about 90km away, over the first set of mountains of the Rocky Mountains, on the Kicking Horse Pass whose summit for the road was at 1,647m
The road out of Golden was climbing at a reasonable rate, which fortunately is 2 lanes going uphill. We were soon into Yoho National Park. Along this section of mountains, the railway has some of its steepest climbing to do, so it does a loop inside tunnels of one mountain, crosses the valley and then does a loop inside tunnels of another mountain before coming out and reaching Field. Around this point somewhere Yoho National Park, becomes Banff National Park and you also cross the border into Alberta State.
Crossing the summit, the road does not drop too much, before you reach the Lake Louise Village Resort. We joined a queue to get into the RV site, and hoped that there would be enough space, as it was getting on towards 7pm and it would be at least another 30mins drive to another site! Also the sun was setting. We did get it, and paid for a fire permit so that we could make a campfire, it was definitely cooler up here, but dad still didn’t put his long trousers on (if you don’t know my dad, I’ll explain, when he goes on holiday he doesn’t where a watch, and if going to a warm place he wears his shorts from the moment he can (eg after landing) to the time he leaves (eg heads for the airports)).
We had amazing views of the mountains, and we moved the RV sufficiently forward so that the view from my bed (which was above the front seats) would be the tops of the mountains.
Whilst i was sorting dinner, dad made a fire, and we had dinner outside (with jumpers/fleeces on) by torchlight and firelight. We didn’t linger too long outside after dinner, but long enough to appreciate the fire. We could loads of stars, it moments like this that i wish i knew the constellations.
Next morning was an early start, our intention was to get up to Lake Louise before 9am, go for a walk, then down to the village to get internet so i could sort out my travel plans back to Vancouver for the next day or day after, and then head north towards Jasper to the Columbia Icefield to go onto the Glacier, before heading south again to get a campsite.
Lake Louise sits in a hanging valley at 1,731m, and was named in honour of Queen Victoria’s 4th daughter, who was also the wife of Lord Lorne, Governor General of Canada. The glacier melt which feeds the lake, contains a fine silt which stays suspended in the water reflecting the green rays of the spectrum.
We were up early enough, and were up at Lake Louise before 9am, and before lots of tourists, the car park was almost empty. It was an awesome moment, seeing the mountains reflected on a still surface. It was a picture perfect moment. Looking at the mountain which had the route we had intended to take up to the Russian Teahouse, by Lake Agnes, dad and i both decided that we didn’t feel like the amount of climbing involved, so decided to do the easy walk along the edge of the lake!
It was a fairly easy walk, looking back on the hotel was awesome as well. At the other side of the lake, we actually decided to continue walking and going up some of the route to the Plain of the Six Glaciers. The full walk up would be 6km, which we realised if we wanted to do all the other things today, we didn’t have time for. We got chatting to an older couple who we kept meeting on the path at various times we or they rested. They said that they had been on the Glacier trip a couple of days earlier and didn’t feel it really justified the $50 cost involved, to stand on a grey block of ice for 20 mins or so. They explained that you could park up and get really close for no cost at all.
We decided then we were not so time dependent, but still didn’t want to do the full walk, so headed back down, where the surface of the lake was now rippled. By the time we got to the front of the hotel, there were lots more tourists around, and we took pictures of the lake with its green colour, before heading down to the Village.
Whilst dad sorted out fuel for the vehicle, i looked up my options for getting back to Vancouver, which from a cost point of view was going to be by Greyhound from Banff, with a 15hr journey if i left in the around midnight on Wednesday getting in Thursday early afternoon. I booked my accommodation, but thought i’d get my ticket in Banff the next day, as there was no option to print out my ticket. We also found details about the campsites in the park, discovering that some of them had now closed for the season.
We then headed on up through Banff National Park, to find a place to stop for lunch. The drive was amazing, these great towering mountains, and glaciers creeping over the edges. By the end of the day we were getting quite blasé about seeing Glaciers.
On the drive we stopped to see the Crowfoot Glacier, which originally had 3 “fingers”, but the bottom has now disappeared, and the middle one is shrinking. On our return journey we saw a lot more of the Glacier higher up on the mountain, which it made it much more impressive.
Our next stop was at the highest road summit of 2,068m (Bow Summit the top of the valley for Banff National Park), and that is also where you can look down on Lake Peytoe (which is at 1,845m). Lake Peytoe is infamous for its unusual blue colour. It was rather breathtaking. Looking at photos it almost looks like someone has changed the colour, it doesn’t seem like it should really be that colour.
We had our lunch before we actually saw the lake, which we timed nicely as one tour bus group was leaving and left as the next group arrived. The viewing area was shared with a ground squirrel, who really didn’t mind having his photo taken; in fact he almost seemed to pose for you!
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