Day 15 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

I am using the new “beta” version of Windows Live Writer to write this blog, so if things appear different on your end, I apologize ahead of time. There will be a learning curve to get through before I am fully competent with how this new version works.

We woke up early and left our hotel in Golden BC and are heading back into Banff National Park to visit a copule of areas that we didn’t see yesterday.

Along the Trans Canada Highway they are building these double tunnels, the purpose of which is for the wildlife to pass safely over the highway. All along the highway they have built tall fences and this funnels the wildlife towards these overpasses for them to use.

First stop inside Banff National Park is Lake Louise. Very peaceful and tranquil, with one canoeist paddling across the lake as I took my photos.

Here are some more shots of the construction crews building the wildlife pathways over the Trans Canada Highway.

We drove to the village of Banff.

We bought tickets for the Banff Gondola ride. The views from on top are spectacular as you will see in these photos.

After the Gondola ride we headed back into downtown Banff to check out an ice cream shop. According to Readers Digest, this store has the best ice cream in Canada. The name is Cow’s and everything including the flavours of ice cream have a cow theme.

We agree with Readers Digest… the best !! Rich and Creamy mmmmmmooooooooo

Although we did not stop at The Banff Springs Hotel, we did find an overlook so we could take some photos. That place is too rich for our blood, but it is an iconic photo opportunity.

We took a drive along Tunnel Mountain Road in hopes of finding some wildlife but instead, we found HOODOO’S

What the heck is a Hoodoo you ask… well this should explain it.

And here for your viewing enjoyment is a Hoodoo.

We will be seeing more Hoodoos later this summer, one of the National Parks in the US that we will be visiting has hundreds, maybe thousands of Hoodoos.

We watched as a little chipmunk entertained us and begged for food.

We left Banff National Park and headed West towards Yoho National Park. I had never heard of Yoho but we are about to find out what it is all about.

As I learnt today, Yoho National Park contains the spiral tunnels of the Kicking Horse Pass. Trains heading East and West come up and over the Kicking Horse Pass using a series of spiral tunnels. You can enlarge the photos to read the descriptions of how the tunnels were built and why.

There are 2 tunnels in view of this lookout. We watched a train heading down and it entered the tunnel furthest away in the photo and came out the closest tunnel. Sort of like a partial figure 8. I will also include 1 video, you can watch the train enter the tunnel and then see it coming out as it loops back on itself. I like trains, so this is all very fascinating to me.

Kicking Horse Pass

After watching the train pass through the tunnels, it was time to move on or another train would be along soon and I would have to stay and watch that one also.

We were curious to see what a “Natural Bridge” is so we drove through a part of Yoho National Park to get to one. Very interesting, the rushing water has bored a hole through the rock and formed a natural bridge.

A video of the water rushing through Natural Bridge is available on my Flickr Site.

So that pretty much concludes our day, we returned to our hotel in Golden BC. In the morning we will get back on the Trans Canada Highway and head West, through Glacier National Park and Revelstoke National Park.

To see all of our photos and videos from today, you can see them on my FLICKR site.

Day 14 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

This morning we are leaving Hinton AB and heading to Jasper National Park and Banff National Park.
We entered Jasper and paid for 2 days because we will return again tomorrow to visit Banff. I like the US National Parks system better, because you can buy a one year pass to all of their National Parks for only $80.00 Canada does not have a pass system for all of the Canadian National Parks and today's visit is going to cost $20.00

Shortly after entering the park we found some Big Horn Sheep grazing at the side of the road.

Then we came across a herd of Elk.

We stopped in the town of Jasper and wandered around the main street looking for souvenirs.

After leaving the town of Jasper we stopped at Athabasca Falls.

As we were driving along the road, up ahead we spotted a Black Bear crossing the road. We followed along side as he wandered in the ditch searching for berries.

Next stop was at a roadside waterfall that was cascading down the rock face wall.

Then onward to the Columbia Ice Field. This is where glaciers in Jasper National Park are born. There are 6 glaciers that flow off of the Columbia Ice Field and this is the Athabasca Glacier, the only one of the 6 that can be seen and visited from the road.

We bought tickets to ride the “Ice Explorer” out onto the Glacier where we disembarked to actually walk on the ice.

The temporary road from the land down onto the ice is at a 32 degree angle, very very steep, but these machines have the power and the torque to overcome this steep terrain.

In this photo you can see the size of the tires used on these vehicles.

After leaving the Columbia Ice Field Athabasca Glacier, we were driving along the road to enter into Banff National Park and we spotted another Black Bear just off the side of the road.

We took photos of Bow Lake and the snow and ice field above in Banff.

That concludes today’s visit to Jasper and Banff, we will return tomorrow because there are several parts of Banff National Park that we want to visit.
To see all of our photos and videos from today, you can click on this link to my FLICKR site.