Hello Again!
Its been a while since we’ve been able to share some adventures on our blog and this summer, we had an truly excellent one. Here is our report on our 3000km drive along southern BC into Alberta and over to Drumheller, before returning through Banff and the Shuswap. We had great weather, good driving, minimal bugs (*except Radium Hot Springs and Golden), delicious meals, grand hikes, hot soaks, and beautiful views. Here are some highlights:
Our first stop was Manning Park, where we had a nice site next to the creek in Coldspring Canyon. We did a challenging hike into the Alpine where we got to enjoy the near-peak flower bloom on a gorgeous day. There was a small forest fire off in the distance that grew slowly over the summer, near Calcite Creek. We had a great time back again in Manning Park and enjoyed the kickstart to our month long road trip. Our next stop was Osoyoos for some wine tasting, biking and swimming. We booked at the NK’mip RV resort and really enjoyed it. It is very busy, cramped RV sites, but we were right on the Lake, and they had a delicious cantina with drinks, nachos and tacos!
We got to enjoy a wine tour one day with stops in 5 different vinyards. We had a great group on our tour, and enjoyed getting to know the 4 other couples on our tour bus. We travelled up the valley to Oliver, and enjoyed the views and products of these great vinyards over a pleasant afternoon. We also spent a day riding our bikes around town and exploring this nice, warm community in a verdant valley.
Our next few days were even more low key as we settled into Christina Lake. We’ve had this on our list for a long time due to its reputation for great swimming and beautiful weather. We had to settle for 3 different sites on 3 different nights, but Gladstone Provincial Park was a gem and we were able to score our own little private beach to swim and paddleboard. We hiked up to a couple viewpoints and enjoyed a few days to read, nap, and swim.
After Christina Lake, we packed up and did a short drive up the mountains into Rossland BC for a night. It was a great little mountain town with lots to explore. We stayed in the Municipal Rossland Lions RV site and it had everything we needed. We walked all around town, enjoyed a nice lunch at the downtown diner and then caught a riviting performance of “Casino Rossland” by the Gold Fever Follies. Quite a story of how Rossland was saved from bankruptcy by some shading dealings!
Next on our trip was Fernie, as we re-joined the Crowsnest highway and we had a fantastic time in a really happening place! Fernie was super fun, with lots of great sites, festivals, attractions and facilities. We really liked the newer RV site and were able to get some laundry done, as well Fernie has a super useful, free shuttlebus that took us all the way up to the Fernie Mountain resort where we secured lift passes up into the alpine and hiked our way slowly back down to the alpine village. We loved the views, flowers and many options for trails to explore. We earned our delicious Donair and Beer at the Fernie music festival that evening back in town.
After Fernie, it was time to head to Alberta! Our main destination for this trip was Drumheller to check out the Badlands and the Royal Tyrell Museum, so we needed to get going. We had a break planned for Calgary, with a two night stop in a hotel to get some sleep and showers and spread out a bit from the cramped camper.
We really enjoyed Calgary and had a lot of fun meeting some locals and exploring the culture, downtown, parks and nearby communities. One of Caroline’s wishes for our visit was to go to a cultural institution, Ranchman’s, the line dancing country bar that has been in Calgary for a very long time! They offered free line dancing lessons on friday evenings and they were very popular! The bar also had multiple stages, a riding bull, silent DJ and lots of bouncers!
Calgary also has a nice walking route along the river downtown, and we explored the art, music and sites along the route. Our best find was the Taste Calgary event with a huge collection of food and drink vendors, with live music. We tried some interesting dishes like the peanut butter fried squid and Jollof rice, from west africa. It was a fun event that we just stumbled upon and really appreciated.
Another big food event for us in Calgary was our chance to hit up a Swiss Chalet, our favourite restaurant. During a big thunderstorm, we made our way across the city to this delicious treat. It had everything we were hoping for and was a very friendly location. We miss our frequent chalet visits, as all the locations in BC have closed.
After Calgary, we had a reunion visit for Caroline with an old friend of hers and reminsced over coffees and treats. Then, back on the road to our main destination, Drumheller! We enjoyed the drive along some of the back highways to get to the Badlands and descend into the valley of the dinosaurs and coal mines. It was so different from the vast farms and rolling hills. We were impressed by Drumheller right away with its committment to dinosaurs and teaching everyone new names and species through road names and cement models around town.
We stayed across the river in the RV resort and were easily able to ride our bikes all around town and on their great tail system out to the Royal Tyrell Museum. We booked a guided hike in the badlands and our timed ticket for the museum and made a day out of it. We learned how to search for fossils and how the geology and history of the area compiled to create this great opportunity to have so many fossils of Albertosaurus and Edmontonsaurus’ skeletons all around the area. The museum was so full of many interesting exhibits, demonstrations, habitats and giant skeletons. Its definitely worth a visit one day. Another cool exhibit was a presentation of some highly detailed and innovative photographs of some important fossils by my colleage at Parkland! Small world indeed.
Our last night in Drumheller had a very incredible storm pass over us with tons of thunder, lightening and heavy rain. South of us, near Calgary, it had turned into a giant hail storm that caused a tremendous amount of damage. Both of us felt it was one of the most intense storms we’ve seen in a while, and we just got the edge of it.
Next was Banff, where we had two nights booked and some plans for a hot springs and our delayed anniversary dinner. After an afternoon soak in the Banff Hot Springs, we enjoyed a delicious dinner at the Waldhouse, a german restaurant attached to the hotel. We took public transit to get around Banff as it was so busy and incredibly hard to find any parking. Banff has been shutting down its main street over the summer, making it a pedestrian only zone. It was quite nice, but it created a traffic nightmare around the city. They recently voted to get rid of the pedestrian zone and to return to cars and busses on the main road.
We also hiked to the Johnston Canyon waterfalls and enjoyed the views and mists on a hot, busy day. Banff and the surrounding area is really struggling with over-tourism. There were always lots of people, traffic jams of cars looking for parking and people waiting for a bus that was not super full. Not sure what they can do to try to address these problems, but its going to be difficult. It did help us deal with the crowds by looking up at all the beautiful mountains that surround the town.
After we had our fill of Banff and its sites, we kept on heading west in search of more hot springs. The closest was a gorgeous short drive away, in Radium Hot Springs. We spent two nights at the Red Streak Camground, up on the hill above town. We soaked 3 seperate times and enjoyed the hikes around the canyon going in and out of town. Its a nice spot with an amazing view of the Columbia river valley. Lots of bugs though!
We had one night to stay in Golden as we continued back west, and stayed right beside the river, across from the High School. It was easy to walk around town and we did some back to school shopping for some shoes and clothes. We also got showers, laundry done and had a chance to enjoy the new Deadpool movie at the theater down the street. Golden had recently had a close brush with a forest fire that came very close to town. It was sobering to see the hillside east of the city and how close the fire came.
Coming down the mountains, we stopped for lunch in Revelstoke and walked around town a bit. We really enjoyed the CPR Museum and all its displays, models and demonstrations. They have a great exhibit to retell the story of how the railroad was built and how it changed the town and Canada. We carried on down into the Shuswap and stayed two nights at the Herald Provincial Park, near Salmon Arm. Two glorious days of hot summer weather and we swam, read and relaxed in a really cozy provincial campground with a large beach area.
We had one last night of camping booked before we returned to Vancouver and were scheduled to visit with family and friends. It was in a tiny, old community called Harrison Mills, and it is where the Harrison river/lake meets the Fraser river. It used to be very important with the CPR rail line coming through there and no bridges across the Fraser yet, but now its a little place left in history. We enjoyed the beach, a last chance to paddleboard and some reminscing about our trip as a whole.
Overall, we were gone for 4 weeks, just about 3000kms of driving, dozens of hikes, many bike rides, tons of swimming and lots of good memories. Here is a picture of our route that we took through our trip:
Link to some more photos from our trip -> https://photos.app.goo.gl/66dS9Zy4jS1LXrLPA
Thanks for coming along on our most recent adventure!
