Yet another somewhat late start to the day. We got up at 7am local time, of course, we were still up at midnight the night before watching some coverage of Day 1 of the Calgary Stampede until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer.
We had a light breakfast of cereal, toast, fruit, coffee, juice and milk. Aunt Helen is lactose intolerant and had bought milk for us to have so we each had a glass to finish up what was there so it didn’t go to waste.
At 9am we left to go to the Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre just outside of Golden heading towards Revelstoke.
The Centre has 4 resident wolves in a 2 acre enclosure, but the wolves are taken out daily to run in a large field 10 km away from the centre. This is where they allow photographers to walk with the wolves without fences (for a price, of course!). We debated doing that, but time, and funds, did not allow us to. We listened to the educational talks about both the wolves and bear conservation and relocation with the use of Karilean Bear Dogs – the centre has several of those as well. I believe that their dogs come from Dawne Deeley, who is a breeder in BC of Karilans.
While we were there, the wolves got into howling for a few minutes which was pretty cool to see and hear as I’ve never seen or heard that in person before.
We’re driving through Kicking Horse Canyon as I type this and looking at the sheer cliffs all around us with rock fall nets, stone parging and anchor ties in the rock – all an effort to hold back the rock from careening down on to the cars passing through here.
We left the wolf centre and had some time before we were due back at Aunt Helen’s for lunch, so we headed back towards Invermere to Parson through the stretch where we had previously seen so many osprey in our prior trip through on the 1st. There were plenty again today, but when they are up on the platforms in the nests, it is difficult to see much more than the bird’s head as is scolds you from above for being too close.
One of the nests had at least two fairly large chicks in it that were being fed by one of the parents, but once we stopped and got out of the car, the adult bird’s warnings to us were enough to get the chicks hunkered down in the next out of sight.
We also stopped near a roadside marsh where I spotted an old, and hopefully long abandoned, small house slowly sinking into the marsh so I could take a couple of photos of it.
At 12:30pm, we made our way back to Aunt Helen’s and actually ended up following her through town for a bit – she had gone out to pick up cold meats and buns for lunch. Lunch was out on her back deck in the sun listening to nature around us and more pleasant chatter – Aunt Helen tells some really great stories and knows a lot about the area and the people in and around Golden.
After lunch, we took a quick trip over to the Golden Museum, which was actually closed for renovations, but it just so happened that Aunt Helen is on the historical society and was able to get us in. Even though many of the exhibits were put away to protect them during the construction of a new ceiling and painting in the main building, there were still many interesting things to see. Many of the larger farm implements had been donated to the museum by my Aunt and Uncle from their farm in Spillimacheen. She also said there were a few things, like a thrashing machine, that had to be left behind when they moved from the farm. It needed tires and Uncle Vern had passed away and Aunt Helen couldn’t get the help she needed to get it ready to move before she needed to move off the farm herself, so it got left behind and is still there. Hopefully, someone somewhere down the road is able to donate it somewhere where it will be appreciated and visited as a piece of local history.
The museum is also now home to a recently reconstructed one room school house originally from Briscoe and the local original train station, which although currently in a state of great disrepair, they are hoping to restore to it’s former glory and house more museum displays.
After the museum, we took Aunt Helen back to her house and reluctantly said our goodbyes.
We are currently on our way to Kootenay National Park right now to see the half of the park that we weren’t able to see on the 1st, after which we will head for Canmore for the night. Our trip is winding down – we are scheduled to fly out in two days and head back to life and reality.
At 4pm, we stopped in Field in Kootenay National Park to get another Park Pass for today and tomorrow and we were on our way into Banff National Park, which we entered shortly after crossing into Alberta around 4:30pm. At 4:45 we stopped at Corbett Creek for a quick photo opportunity.
We are taking the Bow Valley Parkway on this trip, which is a less heavily travelled route by cars, but with more potential for wildlife sightings. The speed limit here is only 60km/hr, whereas on the Trans Canada highway, the speed limit is 110 km/hr, so the going is slower, but we aren’t in a hurry today, as long as we get to Canmore by 7pm or so we’re happy and we’re just going to settle in for the night once we do get there, so taking the “scenic route” this afternoon is perfect and will take us by all of the same stops we wanted to make today just as well as the Trans Canada would have.
There are train tracks everywhere here – even places where you would think it would be impossible to lay track, but I guess, where there’s a will, there’s a way and a hundred some years ago when a way through the rockies was needed, people found a way – whether it was by blasting or building – we have seen some amazing tunnels and astonishing bridges in our travels here in the last week or so.
Aunt Helen was saying earlier today that she heard there is a forest fire on the BC coast today and it seems that some of the smoke from that is coming into Alberta as the air is very hazy here today. We have been incredibly fortunate on our trip thus far having nothing but sunny blue skies and comfortable temperatures the whole trip. My mom, on the other hand, who is house/dog/cat sitting for us back home, is waterlogged at best as it’s been raining steady there since we left with some pretty scary storms, I hear. I have been getting daily emails from her with reports on how things are going at home, up until yesterday when there was no email. A little concerned, I sent her an email asking if everything was all right or if perhaps she’d built and ark and sailed off with the animals in search of higher ground?!
I believe she has been totally smitten by our recently adopted foster failure, Toby, and really, I can’t say I’m surprised. Anyone who spends any length of time with him falls head over heels in love with him.
I’m anxious to get home, not for home itself, but to see my parents and the animals. I miss my Simon snuggles before bed every night and the dogs being happy we’re home – whether we’ve been gone for 2 weeks or 2 minutes – they are still equally overjoyed to see us come back through the door! Ah, it’s so nice to be missed!
Still on the road in Kootenay National Park, it`s now about 7pm and we`ve just left Numa Falls.
So far on our drives through the various parks, we`ve only seen one dead animal – a deer – on the side of the road, but we have certainly seen signs of lots of animal/vehicle collisions which by then are just large red stains on the highway… L I understand that they are very quick to remove road kill to prevent further collisions between vehicles and any scavenging animals that may come to feed on the carcass.
Back around 4:30, we were on the boundary of Alberta and B.C., which is also the boundary between Banff and Kootenay Parks AND the continental divide – where water on one side flows to the Pacific and water from the other side flows to the Atlantic. We took photos of each of us standing half in one province and half in the other. J We were also at that time in the vicinity of Storm Mountain – aptly named I might add, as we were experiencing our first real rain of the whole trip. By the time we stopped at our next destination, Marble Canyon, it was really raining and thundering. Darryl donned whatever gear he had to protect himself and the camera from the rain and trekked into Marble Canyon and once again it seems to have been worth the trouble as he got some great photos.
A little more about Storm Mountain – according to the sign at the viewing platform at it`s base, Storm Mountain is so large and so sheer in height, that it creates its own microclimate. Fog from the morning rises up the steep cliffs of the mountain with the heat of the day and forms denser and denser clouds at the summit which in turn creates rain storms late each DAY, regardless of the surrounding weather in the area. While we were there, there was blue sky and white fluffy clouds all around, but above Storm Mountain, there were dark grey circling clouds and heavy rains.
At 7pm we stopped at Numa Falls, which although small, was very impressive with large, smooth ``bowls`` carved out of the sides of the stone walls on either side of the river by the sheer power of the water over time.
At 7:30pm, we stopped at the Kootenay Park Lodge store, which was supposed to be open until 8, however, the proprietor walked up and locked the door in front of me just as I was about to step into the store. Now, in a time when businesses are hurting for paying customers, does that kind of behaviour make sense? I didn’t think so either, and I’m seriously considering contacting them about it when I get home. They closed half an hour earlier than their posted closing time when there were several customers in the parking lot. Darryl and I and another family in a van were making our way to the store when he locked the door and flipped the sign to closed. He was even nice enough to smile at me while he did it. Prick.
We’re nearly now to Kootenay Crossing where we will turn around and head for Canmore. 
7:45pm Darryl wins the eagle eye spotting award for the day for spotting a small herd of elk laying off the side of the highway. We stopped and took several photos and were delighted when one of the elk got up and began grazing and walked in our direction. We took photos for about 15 minutes of the very co-operative elk, all were either female or it’s too early in the season for them to have antlers yet? While we were sitting there on the side of the road happily shooting away, a vole or perhaps a shrew ran across the road right beside Darryl.
At 8:12pm, we finally reached Kootenay Crossing which marked the point where we had come to from the other direction and tuned around the last time we were at the park, so we turned around and are now heading back to get on the main highway and get to Canmore. We are very behind schedule and I have a lot I want to accomplish tonite so I think sadly it will be yet another late night for me. Tomorrow should be an easy day as we make our way in to Calgary for our last night here.
A rockey mountain rainbow on the way into Canmore.
An animal overpass - there are many over, and under, passes specifically for animals to cross the trans Canada highway safely.
8:20pm Darryl does it again spotting another elk grazing right along side the road (I was typing on the laptop, or I might have seen that one first!). This one was not at all concerned about the car and continued grazing as we inched up along side of it allowing me to get an excellent close up of its face when it stopped to look at us.
I would love to take a video in here of all the birds you hear whenever you stop and get out of the car – only problem is the traffic whizzing by every minute or so. I did make a sound memo about 30 seconds long of birds signing at one of the stops – I hope it works out and people are able to hear it. Will know more when I set up my equipment at the hotel later and download today’s photos.
If Darryl's forte today was elk spotting, mine was deer spotting. Here are a couple that we saw on the way out of the park in the late evening light.
We arrived at the hotel in Canmore around 9:30pm and it was quite dark already due to the storms coming in, so we weren't able to see much of the town, and besides, we were quite tired and glad to be in one place for the night. I got on the hotels wireless access and did some work for the office and posted a couple of over due blog posts before turning in at 2:30am! So much for going to bed early!
Our plans, as I've mentioned before, were to stay on our Ontario time schedules, which would have meant we would be up by 4 or 5am each morning and in bed by 8pm...sadly that has not been the case and we are finding that we are up all hours and sleeping in disgustingly late!!
- Paula
Until tomorrow…
By 8:30, we were in the town of Radium, waiting for the local info centre to open so we could buy our pass to get into Kootenay National Park, where we were planning a stop at Radium Hot Springs. The info centre didn’t open until 9, so we wandered off to see if we could find a road down into the valley for a better view of the Columbia valley. We found a service road that led to a lumber yard and train tracks and followed it for some time. We saw white tailed deer, a hawk we weren’t able to ID as it was in the shadows of a trees some distance away and a snake that Darryl startled when he stepped out of the car on one of our stops. 
From there, we stopped at the Radium Hot Springs Pools and wandered the grounds there for a while taking photos. It looks much as a last remembered it, except that when I was there 23 years ago, there were no fences on the steep hill above the hot pools and that is where we saw goats and snow (it was March last time I was here). We didn’t take the time to go for a dip in the pools, kinda wish we had, but another time, We were anxious to get further into the park and hoped to spot all manner of wildlife. 
