It’s Canada Day! And it’s Canada’s 150th Anniversary! Happy Birthday Canada! The pride of being Canadian is evident everywhere we have gone, from the National Parks to the local gas station, to the civic events to Walmart, everyone seems to have a flag or some symbol of Canada on display. You cannot escape it, flags on cars every store decked out and best of all, all of the National Parks are FREE! So today as we drove from Canmore to Revelstoke we listened to Canadian talkshows and heard a bit of that pride and history and the celebrations that were taking place around the country.
The drive was spectacular. Just when you think that the mountains can’t get any larger, holy cow, they got a lot larger. Once Route 1 turned West, just after Lake Louise, the highway narrowed to two lanes and we started crossing mountain passes instead of just being in the valley floor. Crossing one pass we went down ’10 mile hill’ a 7% grade winding down for the full 10 miles. We crossed Rogers pass. Near Golden, British Columbia we crossed Kicking Horse Pass, the highest pass on the Trans-Canada highway at 5390 feet. We also changed time zones again and now we are on Pacific time. We stopped in Golden, just to check out the town and see what we could see. Golden is a beautiful town along the Trans-Canada and it was all decked out for Canada Day. We walked along a river walk, The Kicking Horse River, and crossed a wooden bridge at a park filled with flowers. Walking into town we just missed a pancake breakfast but met a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer named Justin. We had a great chat for a while before moving on. He had just graduated RCMP school a few months ago and this is his first station. The serve five year tours, so he will be there in Golden for five years. He was from Ottawa originally, did a stint in the military and studied law enforcement in college, really a nice guy we suspect will be a great asset to the RCMP. Nice to meet such a good guy on Canada Day.
Next Came Glacier Park and another charming lady at the information booth who was just brimming over with good information. The drive through Glacier National Park of Canada was amazing, we stopped at a trail called ‘the Rock Garden’ and had lunch and hiked the trail. It was a rather short loop but had quite a diverse landscape. We started off in a forest with a fern floor and ended up climbing over the ‘rock garden’ itself. There were bear warning here as well, I carried the spray and we did see a pile of bear poop right on the trail. At least we think it was bear poop, that’s my story and I am sticking with it.
Back on the road we traveled from Glacier National Park to Revelstoke Mountain National Park and stopped at a trail called ‘Giant Cedars’. And giant cedars there were. This was a boardwalk trail of only about a half mile long but it was awe inspiring none the less. One of those must see spots. The drive from here. Into the town of Revelstoke didn’t take long and soon we arrived at our hotel for the night, it was just after three thirty and we got settled in. The Monashee Lodge was our destination for the day. Dean, the owner, is a great guy and we chatted quite a while with him. He gave us all sorts of good suggestions for dinner and told us about the evening concert in town, even suggested a good walk. The Monashee Lodge gets a high recommendation, one of our favorites. We explored town and made the walk over the Columbia River, all the water we now see is flowing toward the Pacific Ocean. We found supper in town at palace called Taco Club, Carol had tacos and I had a burrito - all very good. From here we walked out onto the street and the nightly ‘Street Fest’ concert was being held. A group called The Staggers & Jaggs were playing and they were very good, but their style of music defies description, kind of folk, blues, jazz kind of thing with maybe a bit of hillbilly thrown in..but they were excellent and the street was full of people celebrating and having a great time. We were gonna go the the fireworks but just pooped out and turned in early. . .
and here is a funny video explaining Canada day -- LINK
