Friday 16 August 2013

Day 15 - Drive to Golden, British Columbia - 16/08/13

Our day started with a long drive ahead of us, this would mean having to say goodbye to Jasper and Alberta for good! This would take us into British Columbia where we would then head across to Vancouver Island, a journey, which if we were to do all at once would be a total of 631 miles.
Instead of spending all our time on the road driving we decided to split this up into three stops along the way split across the week, our first stop would be Golden. This is a little town just inside the state of BC and is a distance of 182 miles from our previous campground, given the Rockies mountainous and windy road (and slow speed limits) this would take a lot longer than on our motorways our sat navigation says this would take us 4 hours, not including stops.
The drive was fairly uneventful along the Icefield Parkway passed all the glaciers and mountains along the way.  We decided that we would stop at The Crossing services, which was the only one we would encounter along the whole of the Parkway where we had lunch to keep us sustained for the rest of the drive.
Just after passing the Jasper National Park (the area where we saw our first Black Bear) we wondered if we would get a look at another, as luck would have it, in pretty much the same spot there was another (a cub) just foraging the bushes for berries. We managed to get a good spot at the side of the road to take some photos (not very good ones). Admitting defeat we decided to press on when not even 500yds away Becky spotted another Black Bear. This time we were the first ones at the scene and got a good view point and some great pictures, even a video. This was a larger bear so we assumed it was the cub's mother.
Continuing on we skimmed the North of Lake Louise and headed West into BC. As we headed into this new territory, we noticed that the mountains seemed closer together, making the valleys between much more dramatic. Our road often led us high along the edges of these valleys, with some scary cliff edges to one side and only a low and flimsy looking barrier between us and a big drop. Along the highway were also sections where the mountains were carved out to make way for the road.
We decided to stop off at a place called Field along the way, which was a tiny village with the train line going through the centre of it, and a little lake that people were swimming in, where we got out and stretched our legs.
Upon arriving at the campsite we checked in, found our plot, did some laundry and had a much needed early night.

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