August 28

We intended to be back in the United States tonight but stopped in a tiny whistle stop called Fort Steele to spend our last Canadian cash on gas before crossing the border down the road a few miles and heard a genuine steam locomotive whistle nearby. We learned that it was part of the Fort Steele Heritage Town nearby. This is the partially restored and functioning original Fort Steele town complete with townspeople in original dress in the stores and on the streets. To walk the streets and visit the buildings is like taking a step back one hundred years or more in time. The town includes government buildings with a jail and post office, an assay office, a variety of stores complete with stocked goods of the era, doctor and dentist offices, churches, a school, a hotel, a theatre, a blacksmith, a tinsmith, log homes and many other businesses and structures all fully furnished and many are staffed. The best part for me was the working narrow gauge steam locomotive train including an old pullman car with a water tower and all the chug-chug, whistle blowing and steam blow off characteristic of those trains. It was mid afternoon when we started and we had very little time until closing but we visited as many buildings as possible, went to a live stage show that was a lot of fun, and rode the train but there was still much to see and do that we didn’t have time for so we decided to camp in the local RV park and go again tomorrow since our tickets were good for two consecutive days. We ended the day with a swim in the pool which was very cool but felt good as the heat has been turned up considerably the last couple of days.

August 27

We left camp this morning in the car long enough for a trip back to the town of Lake Louise and from there the short drive to the actual lake. It was as beautiful as I remembered when Mom and I came here in the early 1970’s on a rare vacation alone. I believe that our family consisted of only Laurie, Leon and possibly LaRinda at that time and I believe they stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Carson for a few days while Mom and I visited Glacier National Park, Cardston, Calgary, Banff, Lake Louise and back through northern Idaho to home in Salt Lake City. On the shore of Lake Louise there is a beautiful resort that I’m sure would cost a bundle to stay at. The whole area around the lake is very nice. After Lake Louise we drove a few more miles to Moraine Lake which was equally impressive but not quite as well developed although there were also nice facilities there. I wanted to rent a canoe and paddle around on the lake but time would not permit as we had to get back and check out of camp. At camp we hooked up and headed down highway #93 toward the town of Radium Hot Springs. We did not go all the way to Banff on highway #1 before the junction with highway #93 but outside of it being another big crowded resort town there is no particular natural scenic wonder to see there. Highway #93 took us almost immediately back into British Columbia and more nice scenery that was marred for a number of miles by a recent huge forest fire. We did, however, see what was either a coyote or fox for one of the few wildlife sightings in recent days. Fairly early in the afternoon we arrived in Radium Hot Springs for a relatively short eighty miles on the day but the swimming facility coming into town was so attractive that we decided to stop here for the day, find a camp site and return for a soak. We found a campsite at Dry Gulch Provincial Campground within about three miles from the pools with the town of Radium Hot Springs about half way between camp and the pools. The town is fair sized and had many hotels, etc. along the main drag that were decorated with many pretty hanging baskets of flowers. There was also a scenic, what appeared to be, natural gap in the rocks through which the highway passes as you descend a steep grade from the north entering town due to rock formations, coloring and how high, narrow and winding it was. After a quick bite of dinner at camp we drove back to the pools and indulged for two and one half hours making prunes of ourselves. We talked to a number of people including a young LDS couple from Lethbridge, Alberta and another older couple from Missoula, Montana. The facility has two pools, one warm and one cooler. Both are in the most attractive settings with high, vegetated rock cliffs behind one entire side of the warmer pool. The water was crystal clear and everything was so attractive and well maintained with excellent dressing rooms and showers, etc. It was also very pleasing that the hot pool was not too hot to enjoy for extended periods without coming out for cool-downs and yet provided a pleasant and penetrating soak and the cool pool was also a perfect temperature for swimming. We did a lot of swimming in the cool pool and a lot of soaking in the warm pool and got back to camp at about eleven PM after one of the most enjoyable and relaxing experiences on this trip. I forgot to take our camera to the pools so I have made arrangements to return tomorrow before we leave to take pictures.

August 26

We left camp and retraced our steps from yesterday without stopping and just enjoyed the scenery. When we got to where we turned back yesterday the pace slowed significantly as the points of interest and the scenery was now new and still ever so fantastic. Our first stop was at Mistaya Canyon where another river had cut a very deep, narrow wandering canyon in the limestone. It was as fascinating and beautiful as the prior ones. We then passed Lower Waterfoul Lake for some very pretty pictures followed by a short, steep hike to overlook Peyto Lake. It seems all lakes in this area have a characteristic turquoise color but this glacial meltwater lake was the most pastel blue/turquoise of any we have ever seen. Finally it was Bow Lake and the Crowfoot Glacier. Shortly after that we came into the resort town of Lake Louise. I need to mention that the mountains lining either side of the valley continued to be steep, jagged, colorful and rocky with many hanging glaciers along the way. Earlier today the climb over Sunwapta Pass had the motor home straining in granny at twenty miles per hour for a long way up and granny plus brakes for a long, winding ride back down. In Lake Louise we found crowds, no parking for large vehicles and a full campground so we took highway #1A to the Protection Mountain campground. It was very tight to drive through but had vacancies for which we paid $21.50 to dry camp and another $8 if we wanted a campfire (which we didn’t). At camp we got together to decide our route from here home. Mom is getting anxious to be home so we have decided to bypass Calgary and take highway #93 from here to Kalispell, Montana where we will visit Glacier National Park before heading for the barn.

August 25

This was our day trip down the Icefields Parkway almost ninety miles plus the trip from camp to the Parkway junction for a total of about two hundred twenty miles round trip. The Parkway is highway #93 in Alberta, Canada from Jasper to Lake Louise and is approximately one hundred forty miles of the most non-stop unbelievable scenery you can imagine. It travels through both Jasper and Banff National Parks. We took about one hundred fifty pictures along the ninety miles for an average of almost two pictures per mile. This is good because words cannot describe the beauty and variety of scenery and pictures have a difficult time but that is all we have besides our memories. We hope to share more than the precious few that we can post when we return home. Highlights were Horseshoe Lake, Athabasca Falls and canyon, Sunwapta Falls and canyon, the Athabasca Glacier, the Weeping Wall and numerous incredible mountains and valleys. Athabasca Glacier was neat because I actually walked on the glacier which originates in the Columbia Icefield to the west of the highway. This icefield is the largest icefield in North America. Our trip involved a number of hikes of varying length but nothing longer than one half hour. At the end of the day my eyes were almost tired of seeing so much beauty.

August 24

We drove across the provincial border into Alberta then into Jasper National Park and on to the town of Jasper where we did some looking around and then drove to Maligne Lake where we took the boat tour to the world famous Spirit Island (try googleing Maligne Lake and Spirit Island for more info). On the way we passed Medicine Lake which is a natural lake whose level fluctuates considerably and unpredictably due to some drainage system that is not well understood that comes and goes through the lake bottom. The lake level was quite low for our visit. The mountains in this area are the steepest and most solid rock, devoid of any kind of vegetation of any I remember seeing so far this trip. There are also incredible patterns in the rock. The scenery overall was fabulous on the lake. On the return trip to Jasper we took a hike down along the Maligne Canyon. This was the most incredible scenery ever with a canyon that was at times narrow enough it seemed you could jump across it yet it was over one hundred fifty feet or more deep for the most part with waterfalls along its length. At times it was so narrow and deep you could not even see the bottom. Even pictures could never describe this wonder of nature. After returning to Jasper we drove the short distance to both Pyramid and Patricia Lakes north of town. They were pretty but after what we had seen they seemed a bit mundane but we did see a pretty bull elk and get some pictures including a movie clip of him digging up bushes with his antlers. We then stopped at a combination KFC and Pizza Hut in Jasper for dinner and returned the twenty-two miles to camp.

August 23

The day started with and investigation to see why our motor home is leaking antifreeze. I could find no leaking hose and it appears it may be a leak in the radiator core. We will go on and keep an eye on the coolant and hopefully get home by just adding water when necessary so it can be repaired at home. We then traveled about two hundred twenty miles today to camp in the Lucerne Campground a few miles into Mount Robson Provincial Park. The scenery was again wooded rolling hills with a lot of farm and ranch fields and livestock in the vicinity of the town of McBride. Then at the junction with highway #5 the scenery changed rather quickly to rugged mountain, lake and river scenery on into camp. Our first stop today was at The Ancient Forest about sixty miles east of Prince George. This is a relatively small and rare inland tropical rain forest with all the micro climate and vegetation associated with such a forest. It was in fact raining on us off and on all during our hour and a half hike. There was a pretty waterfall, amazing vegetation, moss and lichens and a pleasant musky smell of wet cedar. But the most amazing of all were the huge cedar trees. Many were ten to twelve feet in diameter with the largest being sixteen feet in diameter and thought to be up to two thousand years old. We then traveled along the upper Fraser River which is a pretty turquoise color, saw the cloud shrouded peak of Mount Robson, at 12,972 feet the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, and drove past Moose Lake. Now at the campground we have another beautiful lake with a rugged and picturesque mountain backdrop. We finished the day with a good old western flick of Gene’s and some planning for the next few days in Jasper and Banff National Parks.

August 22

Happy sixty-fifth birthday, Gene! We spent the day touring Prince George today but moved camp to the overflow parking of a casino at the intersection of highway #16 (the one we are currently traveling east on) and highway #97 (the one we came through on when we were traveling north) because the noise at Wal-Mart was intolerable. We first visited the Saturday farmer’s market then took a walk along the Fraser River at Fort George Park. Next we visited the Railway and Forestry Museum and spent quite a bit of time there because there was so much of interest to see. Next we drove a few miles north of town and a little off the beaten path to Ferguson Lake, a pretty little lake on the property of a pioneer homestead for a picnic lunch. There we took a nature hike on a trail that circled the lake and included the ruins of the old cabin and associated structures. Gene and Lynn then tried their luck on the slot machines in the casino and then we went for a birthday dinner with Gene and Lynn to Boston Pizza where Mom and I shared a delicious baby back rib dinner with some very good mashed potatoes and a big salad.

August 21

We got a bit of a late start this morning but still traveled about two hundred twenty miles to the major city of Prince George. We made no stops but passed through many small towns and villages and there was no notable scenery if you call rolling hills and variegated forests with many streams and lakes along the way mundane. Just a few miles west of Prince George we hit a real downpour that lasted for another hour after we pulled into our Wal-Mart campground. It had rained hard all last night in Smithers and I was thinking that we just caught up with the same storm moving east. We then took a driving tour around the city to find the location of a farmer’s market and some other places we wish to visit tomorrow plus one beautiful park on Connaught Hill overlooking the city with some very pretty flower gardens. We then stopped at a Costco for an ice cream cone and played card games until bedtime.

August 20

This was mostly a downtime day in Smithers. Mom cut my hair, we did a pile of laundry, washed a ton of caked mud and dirt off the Elantra and washed the worst of the bugs and dirt off the motor home. Mom and I then went for a walking tour of the town starting at the local art center and museum. Besides a lot of neat displays of old pioneer and mining pictures and items a gentleman there showed us the first automated egg carton making machine invented here. He then showed us a pair of large machine guns and told us a lot about how in 1950 a U.S. Air Force B36 bomber dropped an atomic bomb that resulted in a “dirty” bomb blast but not a full-blown atomic bomb blast in costal waters near here. It did this because it was in distress and was preparing for a crash landing. The guns came from that wreckage. He also explained that a large immigration of Dutch and Swiss people came to settle this area in the years preceding and soon after World War II. We then visited a Dutch bakery followed by a Dutch sausage market where we bought some freshly baked cheese biscuits at the bakery and then some samples of salami and sausage and a genuine Dutch chocolate-covered hazel nut bar at the Sausage Factory. They were pretty pricey but fresh and very good! We then took a short ride up to the Twin Falls in Glacier Gulch near town. Each water fall seems more beautiful than the preceding ones but this one may have been because we could hike right to the base of one of the falls where we got sprayed by the blast of water hitting the rocks at the bottom of at least a two hundred foot final drop. And in this case you got two waterfalls for the price of one only a few hundred feet apart and both about the same height with typical multiple drops.

August 19

For a change it has been warm and sunny all day. We drove only about a hundred twenty miles to the city of Smithers. We got a late start and had quite a lot to see on the way. The first stop was in the Hazelton Area where there are three small related towns with an Old, a New and a South Hazelton all within a short distance from each other. We stopped at the visitor center at the junction with highway #62 and took the Elantra to the Hagwilget Canyon of the Bulkley River where a single-lane suspension bridge spans the canyon with the river two hundred sixty feet below. It is a very picturesque canyon. From there we visited Old Hazelton which is located at the confluence of the Skeena and Bulkley Rivers. At their visitor center on the bank of the Skeena River we watched a bear on the far side of the river walk down the river bank for quite a ways before going back into the forest. We then paid a short visit to the ‘KSAN Historic Village which is a reconstruction of a Gitxsan Indian village which has stood on that site for centuries. There are communal houses, totem poles and a very old dugout canoe. From there we drove about eight miles to the First Nation village of Kispiox where we saw quite a number of very old totem poles, an old church and typical Indian houses. After that we hooked up and drove a few miles down the road to the village of Moricetown. This seemed to be a town populated exclusively with First Nation people and is the oldest settlement in British Columbia. Right off the highway on a side road the Bulkley River narrows over the Moricetown Falls and flows through the Moricetown Canyon where Indian people were netting salmon coming up the river. The river was full of Pink and some Chinook salmon and it was very interesting to watch a number of people dipping nets into the river at various places around the foot of the falls and scooping out as many as three of four Pinks at a time and an occasional Chinook salmon. Smaller fish were quickly returned and they seemed to only be keeping larger fish. After that we drove the last few miles to a campsite in the parking lot of a Safeway store in Smithers.