Arieh here. We arrived in Vancouver last night amid a steady stream of rain—what else you ask? Fortunately, the weather improved after we left Calgary and only rained as we approached Vancouver. We left Calgary on Monday on a relatively warm (12 C) and sunny day. We stopped in Lake Louise, walked to the end of the lake and back (1 hour and flat—see pictures below) and had a wonderful lunch of Rye Vita crackers, Cheddar cheese, peanut butter, jam and grapefruit juice out of the back of our van. For dessert we had apples.
As vast and unbroken the Prairies are, the Rockies are vast and very “broken”. The drive along the Trans Canada through Kicking Horse pass (elevation ????) is awesome. Every time I see those mountains I am still stuck by how high they are and how beautiful they look with snow on their tops. Most of the day was clear skies, but even with some cloud cover at the top, the mountains still look BIG.
One of the “human” stories of the Rockies is the building of the railroads. There are numerous points of interest along the way to Golden telling this story. One viewing area shows the idea of “spiral” tunnels (borrowed from the Europeans) where the engine of long trains can be seen exiting from the upper tunnel while the end of the train has not yet entered the lower tunnel. The track is literally “spirally” through the inside of the mountain.
Golden has a nice B & B (Country Comfort—877.644.6200) as it was too cold to sleep in the van. Golden is situated in a valley surrounded by towering mountains. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to get a great view. On the other hand, we did see a covered wooden bridge made of local trees (some of them 1,000 years old) built and erected in 24 days (picture below).
The second day out of Calgary was spent driving to Shushwap Lake, just east of Kamloops, and walking around the Rogers Pass area of the Selkirk Mountains. A memorable short walk was along an abandoned railway path that is now interrupted by the lack of train tressles crossing one river two times. The supports made of quarried rock are still there but no wooden bridges. We spent the night at another great B & B (O’Reillys Place—250-675-3145) overlooking Shushwap Lake (picture above). Great food and interesting owners.
Our last day before Vancouver was divided up between walking (See Val and her Tilley hat) in a provincial park (watching the Sockey salmon return to spawn and die) and driving through the Fraser Canyon. Every 4 years the adult salmon travel from the Pacific Ocean up the Fraser River to Adams Lake. There they lay their eggs and die. Millions of these salmon are doing this. Unfortunately, we saw only about 30 of these fish as we were about one week too early. The good news was that we missed the crowds of people. The drive through the Fraser Canyon was planned, cancelled due to rain and clouds and then done as planned. What a treat—a little longer drive than the new highway through the Okanagan region of B.C., but definitely worth it and not to be missed. The weather cleared in Kamloops and just west of the city one is now looking at semi-arid brush land, cattle and hay country (picture above). The Thompson River has cut deeply through the land and winds along the way to its meeting place with the Fraser River. Where they meet, the land then turns into a mountainous canyon area created by the speed of the Fraser as it flows to the Pacific—the same river the salmon have to go up! The two Canadian transcontinental railways used this route to connect Canada back in the 1880s and 90s—one on each side of the river canyon. There ain’t a lot of room there, but it was created by a lot of pickaxes, shovels, dynamite and muscle. The weather was sunny and coolish in the canyon, but I know from experience the area can be like a furnace in the summer.
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