A Frustrating Day!!

Leaving Revelstoke

One of the 8 tunnels we drove through 

Inside the tunnel 

At the top of Roger's Pass

Roger's Pass

Roger's Pass 

This water was so green, probably from some kind of mineral from the mountains

Only animals we saw!!

We left Revelstoke this morning heading for Golden and the Columbia Icefield’s driving through Roger’s Pass in the Glacier National Park. I’m glad we stopped in Revelstoke and didn’t try to get to Golden last night, you really needed to be alert. The mountains were so beautiful, the area is very rugged with lots of sharp curves leading into repetative “s” curves, we were only able to drive about 40 kph through the “s” curves with lots of semi trailers on the highway. We drove through 8 tunnels throughout Glacier National Park, so cool! Also when we were just coming up to Golden, it may have been an elk, but we’re both pretty sure it was a MOOSE, it crossed the highway ahead of us. We scoured the ditch looking for it when we came up to it, but it disappeared into the bush.

Animal tunnels in Banff National Park, all the forests along the highway are fenced to keep the animals from roaming onto the road, so they put these bridges that the animals use to cross, which are fenced along the edges also.

Banff, Alberta

Bow River

Bow River

Damage from flash flooding

After driving for a while, we had already entered Banff National Park, (not Banff town), where we needed to make a turn-off onto another highway to go through the Icefield’s. Well, we missed our turn off and were halfway between the turn off to the Icefield’s and Banff, too far to go back and we can’t blame it on the GPS, it was our fault! I was so mad, I wanted to see the Icefield’s, but it was a long way back. After sitting looking at the map for a while trying to figure it out, we kept going towards Banff, changing our route. We drove through Banff and went up to Bow River viewpoint to see the mountain water rushing down the falls. We walked around here for a bit, stretching our legs and taking a break. We ended up finding a Calgary man’s wallet on the stone ledge, looked at his ID for his picture to see if we could see him around. We ended up taking it to the Tourist office in town, they said they will probably mail it to him. He must have been in a panic looking for it. We left Banff and had just driven past Canmore where you could see the damage done from the rushing water coming off the mountain that had closed the Trans-Canada Highway two weeks ago. It had just been opened in the last couple of days. The highway has been repaired but all the mud and water is still along the shoulders in the ditches, with lots of large boulders and crushed rock put in to stop the erosion and support the highway. There were quite a few places where the damage was evident, some buildings and trees were still needing to be removed. We didn’t see ANY elk, mountain sheep or mountain goats around the park, made me so mad, I wanted to see some.

We came up to Calgary where we had to take the by-pass to get to Hwy. 2, we were heading towards Red Deer and Sherwood Park. We programmed the GPS and after going on a long goose-chase, we ended up on the highway back towards Banff. As soon as we got onto the highway, there was the sign that said, Banff …miles. Darn it!! We got ourselves turned around and headed back to Calgary, but not around it, we ended up going through it and it was rush hour. We used the little map in the CAA book since we didn’t have a full size one, (we weren’t going to Calgary) to figure our way through, making our way to the Deerfoot Trail which is also Hwy.2. We didn’t get to Sherwood Park till about 9:00, found a hotel and called it a night.

Tomorrow morning, we’re going to my brother’s niche at the cemetery and want to get an oil change since it’s already time. Hoping to drive to Regina tomorrow, stopping in Perdue to see my Aunt & Uncle.

Don't know what happened with the blue print under the last picture, tried fixing it up but can't.

Talk to you tomorrow!