Tunnel Mountain Campground, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Odometer – 6640
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We were a bit apprehensive this morning as to today’s activities. Happily Shir woke up in a great mood, and didn’t seem to have any discomfort with her new cast. So we decided to continue exploring the wider area, and not stick around town. We drove northwest to a small national park called Yoho. It is some First Nations name.
The park has several major attractions, and we saw three today. The first is Emerald Lake. The glacier water feeding this lake taints it a beautiful greenish hue that goes well with the mountain backdrop. This lake was once featured on Canada’s $10 bill. We got to the lake at noon, after driving for and hour and a half. Shir and Orr had their siesta on the way. We parked and had a pasta lunch, then finally at 1:30 started to hike the 5.2km around the lake. The views were outstanding. We walked at a leisurely pace, trying not to rock the stroller too much, for the sake of Shir’s cast and arm.
That did not stop Shir from getting off the stroller and running around in parts of the trail. The hike took us almost 3 hours, during which Orr fell asleep again in the stroller. She just loves a bumpy ride as a sleeping pill.
From the lake we drove down the road a few km to a Natural Bridge formed on Kicking Horse River. It was a nice sight, but after the arches in Utah no biggie.
The third attraction was Takkakaw Falls. These are amazingly high waterfalls with a huge volume of water pouring down from Daly Glacier. The fun begins on the way to the falls, driving 13km up Yoho Valley road. At one point there are two tight switchbacks. You actually have to drive the RV up in reverse after the first switchback, because it is too tight to make the turn! Paola did a great job of directing me from outside, and we managed to get through.
After supper and seeing the falls, we began our long drive back to Banff. We took the Bow Valley route, parallel to route 1, but much more scenic and limited in speed. We hoped to see some wildlife, but tonight all the animals must have been busy doing something else. All we got for 50km of slow driving was one lazy she-elk at the side of the road.
Good Night,
-Hemi
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2007 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Alberta, British Columbia, Canada, North America RV 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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