June 30, 2009

The day started with an early continental breakfast at the hotel, then on the road by 9am – so much for the early start!! All of our best intentions to stay on our home time schedule have gone completely out the window – mostly due to all the late nights visiting here. What my family here doesn’t seem to realize, is that when it’s midnight for them, it’s feeling like 2am for us and we’re bagged!! This is something that gives my cousin Coreen’s husband, Terry, much delight. When I started yawning at 10pm, the ribbing started and lasted well into the night!

Today marked another milestone for us as we made our first Timmy’s stop of the trip for what turned out to be one of the most horrible cups of coffee I’ve every had from there, and so, it will also be our last stop at Timmy’s on the trip.

Our plan for this morning is to make our way to the mountain skiing village of Kimberly, which is modeled after a Bavarian alpine village. We took Hwy 93/95 to Ta Ta Creek, then went southwest on 95A to Kimberly.

This is a big day for wildlife spotting – just in the am alone, we saw:

9:15am soaring bald eagle
9:29am bald eagle hunting in Kootenay River
9:49am 2 turkey vultures
9:50am white tailed deer
9:54am nesting bald eagles
10:00am 2 kingfishers
10:12am great blue heron
10:30am bald eagle
10:40am red tailed hawk
10:42am white tailed deer
10:56am mule deer (buck)

11:00am we arrived in the village of Kimberly and it was as quaint as we expect it would be. Most of the town looks like any other but they have two cobblestone streets (The `Platzl`) that are closed to automobile traffic and are lined on both sides with Bavarian style buildings, shoppes and restaurants. Darryl and I wandered the streets and browsed in the shoppes for a couple of hours before sitting down to lunch on a patio at the Gausthaus am Platzl restaurant where Darryl had a glass of their Bavarian pilsner beer (Warsteiner) with his lunch of pulled pork & brie sandwich and I had garlic sautéed prawns with rice and a Corona.

It was another sunny, warm, gorgeous day – absolutely perfect patio dining weather, and we were loathe to bring it to an end, so when our waitress suggested homemade strudel and coffee after lunch, we were more than happy to take her up on the offer. Darryl had strawberry rhubarb strudel and I had the more traditional apple – both were delicious.

By 2:30, we had made our way to Elizabethville and the Elizabethville falls. A short hike off the road took us to a scenic lookout over the basin at the bottom of the falls.

By 3:10pm, we had completed the loop and were back in Cranbrook where we began that morning.

Out afternoon wildlife spottings included:

3:22pm white tailed deer
3:51pm osprey fishing
4:30pm osprey on nest at Wasa Lake

At 5pm, we arrived in the area called Canal Flats, which is known for its variety of wildlife, but I think someone sent out a memo we were coming and told all the animals to hide, as we saw none. Even still, with no animals, the scenery was incredible – the colour of the water was unbelievable. Shortly after, we got our first glimpse of the Columbia River and then were at our hotel by 6pm for the night.