Found a very nice KOA campground in Sicamous after 267 miles and a very good decision to leave Banff a day early.

Sunday, September 21
Stopped at a Safeway in Salmon Arms to replenish supplies, then drove a long road through “lake country”. There were a lot of lakes, resembling the Finger Lakes of NY, with summer cottages. This is only about five hours from Vancouver, and it is Sunday, so there was a good bit of traffic. Then the terrain changed dramatically, as we left the Rockies, becoming very dry and rolling.

Hoodoos—composed sedimentary rock covered by harder rock. The softer rock erodes and leaves “fingers” exposed.

Friday, September 19
Took some pictures of a magpie sleeping in the tree outside our RV, then getting into someone’s car.

USA & Canada~Northwest Parks   Part 3

Lake Louise was a bit of a disappointment. Hundreds and hundreds of people milled about, and the lake was smaller than I had anticipated.

Went back into town. Banff is a vibrant, very up-scale tourist town, which must be pretty active all year round. Many, many restaurants and shops and many, many people walking around. We wanted to see Bow Falls, and the Banff Golf Course, where elk (especially now at the start of rutting season) were supposed to abound. The falls were very pretty, but we saw no elk or American Dippers (a bird for which I have long been searching).

Stellar's Jay

&

Common Goldeneye

Came back and decided to leave a day early and not try and make Harrison Hot Springs in one day. Drove about 65 miles today.
Saturday, September 20—left Banff about 9 and received a full refund for the early departure. Up the TransCanada highway to Lake Louise. We spotted four elk on our way out of the campsite.

The weather has been very varied. There is no evidence at all of the smoke from the California fires, but there has been a rapidly changing mix of sunshine and rain. We drove the very winding Norquay Road to the top. Lots and lots of switchbacks. Our driver in Glacier told us they had designed the Going-to-the-Sun road without many because the snowplows have no place to dump the snow when they are on a switchback. I guess Banff didn’t think of that. We went to the Cave and Basin Centennial Center, a very nice museum and Visitor’s Centre where we took a walk on the boardwalk through the marsh. Didn’t see much except for one lone Kingfisher about 200 yards away. We decided to come back to the campground for lunch and a rest. Then we drove up to the Minnewanka Lake, the biggest one in the park. It was a beautiful teal color and people were taking rides around the lake in boats.

Got an early start and went through the town of Banff to the Vermillion Lakes. We were hoping to see some of the waterfall all the brochures spoke of, but only saw Mallards, a few female Goldeneye and a lone California Gull. But the scenery was terrific.

We turned around, vowing to visit Jasper NP another time, and returned to CA 1. Leaving Banff, we Immidiately entered British Columbia and Yoho NP, stopping for lunch at the border. During a celebrated expedition to explore the west, Dr. James Hector travelled ahead of the group, and became the first European to discover a steep mountain pass in 1858. Ater the surgeon’s trusty steed knocked him over with a blow to the chest, the spectacular route was dubbed Kicking Horse Pass The Canadian Pacific Railway, the economic heart of this area, set up restaurants at the base of Mount Stephen to avoid pushing heavy dining cars up the mountain. We stopped to see the “spiral tunnels” that proved a solution to trains heading down the mountain at an incline which cause many tragedies. This laid the groundwork for creating Mount Stephen reserve, renamed in 1901  Yoho NP. Eight years later, a visiting scientist, Dr. Charles Dolittle Walcott, discovered the Burgess Shale fossils. These exquisitly preserved marine organisms offer a glimpse back  to more than 500 million years.

We stopped at Johnson Lake on the way back and Abner made a friend in the parking lot.

About 5 we tried Vermillion Lakes and the golf course again, but no luck, except for a pesky magpie.

Gail South

Moraine Lake parking was full and we skipped it in favor of the Icefields Parkway—a great decision. At the end of the 19th century J. Norman Collie,  British chemist turned mountaineer, brought two friends for a return expediditon to the Canadian Rockies. They fought their way up a peak that had never been scaled, and, at the summit, had their breath taken away, becoming the first non-native people to gape at a magnificent field of ice resting on a wide plateau. The Columbia Icefield, an echo from the last ice age, spans the Continental Divide and the boundary between Banff and Jasper National Parks. Headwaters to three major river systems, the icefield feeds eight major glaciers and brushes against some of the highest mountains in the Rockies. We stopped at Herbert Lake, then at Crowfoot Glacier. A century ago, when this waas named, three “toes” of the ice clung to the mountainside. The lower toe has since melted and the middle toe is slowly disappearing.

This is a “wildlife bridge” built so the wildlife can cross the highway safely.