Day 11

Last night I visited my Calgary cousins at my cousin's house. His house is an ex grow-op (I would like to confirm that it is no longer a grow op), and requires a lot of work. To date, he has redone his bathroom, bedroom, most of his floors and most of his living room. His wife is an architect and does most of the design work, and he is an impressive DIY-er. The results are beautiful. I was especially impressed by the furniture he made.

The original plan for me was to go kite-snowboarding today with a friend of my uncle's, but at the last minute he heard about a funeral he needed to go to. I decided that instead of coming up with something else to do, I would just move along. So I packed up my things, said goodbye to my aunt and uncle, and set off to Kamloops BC.

My uncle and I went over a number of points of interest on the way and planned out my route.

Going back into the mountains took my breath away again. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it. If you have never been to mountains, put it on your bucket list, its something else. No amount of pictures and descriptions prepared me for this. My first detour was to get off the 1 West to the 1A West. Its a little more scenic and the objective was to see mountain sheep, which sadly did not happen, but it was still beautiful, and I saw a coyote!

Next stop was at Johnstone Canyon, which is a short walk up a canyon with a stream running through it. There are some beautiful falls. I only went to the close ones so I would have time to see the rest of the things on my list and get to Kamloops sometime today! I only fell once on the hike, which was impressive because the entire hike was on packed snow and ice.

I REALLY wanted to jump in, but its all glacier water, and  its still kinda winter...

Leaving the Canyon I came across one of the animal bridges I talked about earlier this week.

Animal crossing

Next stop was at Lake Louise. I walked around there for a bit. For those of you who don't know what so special about Lake Louise, just think about any post card you've seen from the Rockies, and you're probably picturing Lake Louise. Its still covered in snow and ice at this point, but its still very beautiful.

Lake Louise in the winter

I finally pulled into Revelstoke, and turned south to visit the Halcyon Hot Springs. This detour involved taking a ferry across the Columbia River. As it turned out they could be better described as the Halcyon Hot Tubs, but at least the locale was very nice.

View from the ferry

I mentioned in a prior post how the idea that nature could be very dangerous out here was a foreign concept to me. I got that feeling even more today. Every mountain has obvious avalanche routes on it where there are no or very few trees. When an avalanche goes, it takes out EVERYTHING in it's path, including trees, rocks, roads and cars. There were signs everywhere which said “Avalanche area: No stopping”, even tunnels so in high risk areas so that the avalanche would go over the road, and cars don't get swept off the road. The most interesting thing I saw in this regard was a couple army guys in an “avalanche control” area with a cannon pointed at a mountain, and starting to stop cars. I didn't see what exactly they were planning, but I would assume they were going to set off a preemptive avalanche.

Avalanche tunnel

I'd like to talk about my friend Garmean, who has been my faithful companion this whole trip. She keeps me from getting lost, and in typical female fashion, she is always telling me I'm lost when I don't go exactly the was she thinks I should be going, but we talk through it, and at the end of the day she gets me where I need to be.

And that's how the cookie crumbles.