We decided to take a more southerly route for our return
journey to Vancouver, at times only a few kilometres from the US border. We had less time than our eastward journey,
with just under a week to make our way back.
First stop after Calgary was Waterton Lakes National Park in
southern Alberta. It wasn’t on our original list of things to do, but was
recommended by our friends and it was definitely worth the trip. Didn’t start so well though.....Chris read
(well thinks he did) in the lonely planet guide that the town campground was no
good. So we decided to try and stay at
the campground on the edge of town. We
turned up, discovered it was a lot further out of town than we thought, paid
our money, then headed to the tenting area where we were completely swamped by
mosquitoes within moments of getting out of the car. Thinking it would not be much fun tenting
with that many mosquitoes we made a quick exit and luckily got our money
back. We ended up camping at the town campsite
which was pretty good, so either the lonely planet or Chris was wrong. Waterton town is a cute little town, however
is slightly overrun with deer and ground squirrels. The ground squirrels don’t
seem to do much apart from eat grass, dig holes and scare other ground
squirrels away from their holes....quite amusing to watch and kind of
cute. The deer still had fawns with
them......bambi and venison burgers came to mind.
While at Waterton Lakes we did a day walk up to Crypt lake. It
was a pretty cool walk. We started in
the forest, crossed scree slopes and streams, climbed ladders and walked
through a tunnel just to get to the lake.
The lake itself was really nice.
There was still a bit of ice floating on it and crazy Chris decided to
go for a very brief swim. We realised
afterward that the other side of the lake was the US.
After Waterton we headed to Fernie. Our plan was to stay a couple of nights
there, but all the tent sites were full (only RV parks had places available),
so we had to stay in Sparwood, which turned out to be a slightly random but
good campsite. The next day we headed up
to Fernie ski resort to check it out. We
decided that we liked Kicking Horse better as a skifield to spend the winter,
although Fernie town was quite nice.
After Fernie we headed to Rossland, another option for winter. The town of Rossland is at over a 1000 m
elevation and gets on average 3 m of snow a year, the ski field nearby even
more. Rossland is well known for its
skiing and mountain biking. Chris hired
a bike for day a biked around some of the trails. The highlight of the day was seeing a bear
crash out of the trees beside the trail and run away.....I think both the bear and
Chris got a fright. Chris was happy
though....the bear drought has finally broken!
We’re back in Vancouver now, getting organised for our trip
up north. First stop Whitehorse, then we
catch the train over to Skagway in Alaska.
