Friday, June 2nd:
Saw 3 black bears driving to Dawson city. Beautiful drive along the big beautiful Canadian mountains and rivers. Saw lots of oil/gas/energy development through Ft. Nelson and almost to Dawson Creek. Saw the SUPER cool wood carvings in Chetwynd. Picked lilacs- they smell so good.
Unbelievable scenery today- lots of valleys, rivers, bridges, snow capped mountains. Saw snow and ice still on the lakes. We are listening to Stephen King's the Stand on audio book. It is 45 hours long and we are about 1/3 of the way through. Listenging to this book is helping us put on the miles. We are headed to Prince George for the night. We had a stinky arrival into Prince George- some sort of mills or plants, nasty! Beautiful downtown and we got a hotel room at the Coast Inn.
Saturday, June 3:
Nice night of sleep at the Coast Inn- highly recommend it! Clean, quiet and a much needed shower. Got there and settled at midnight- we are putting in long days. Slept until 8, ate a quick breakfast at Tim Hortons and hit Hwy 16 East. We are passing beautiful mountain views, rolling hills, ski areas, hiking areas. British Columbia has beautiful roads between Prince George and Jasper. We are appreciating good pavement when we hit it. Stopped at the Rearguard Falls Provincial Park falls- BIG WATER!! The views of Mt. Robson are amazing. Note: stop here next time to camp.
Jasper is beautiful. We wish we had a little bit more time here and we would have done the tram ride up at Jasper. Amazing views around every turn- WOW!
We hiked at mile J64.4 Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Icefield.
We drove to Lake Louise and camped at the campground. We went to the infamous Lake Louise village and overlook. We also took our first bike ride of the trip in the park.
Sunday, June 4th:
Took a hike early am up to an overlook over Lake Louise. Beautiful turquoise lake, people canoeing below. There is still a lot of ice and snow still on the trails. There are lots of tourists arriving as we hit the road @ 11am.
We continued on the yellowhead hwy and turned S on 93. Drove through Kootenay National Park and stopped at Radium Hot Springs for an afternoon soak. Stayed on 95/93 South and on to the USA border at Roosville. We went past Fairmont Hot Springs (sadly as we wished we would have spent more time there). We saw cool sandstone formations outside of Invermere.
