After Banff and Jasper - Canada has more!

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We stopped for lunch in the delightful little burg of Kaslo, British Columbia, which we never would have discovered without recommendations from a native Canuck. (see below). We lunched, overlooking Kootenay Lake, on baked chicken with arugula and a tart-sweet sauce on chewy sourdough bread. It wasn't just the town, or the great lunch, of course, but getting there that gave us generous helpings of Canadian backroad treats.I regretted leaving.

It's hard to beat Canada's two most spectacular western national parks, Banff and Jasper. But PK and I discovered that they can be at least rivaled as we made our way through British Columbia back to the USA.

We're lucky to have a Canuck buddy who clued us in about out-of-the-way places as well as popular attractions. Everybody knows that advice from a like-minded and well informed "local" is way better than shucking through a guidebook and agonizing over a thousand choices. (We did consult a guidebook, Lonely Planet's Banff, Jasper and Glacier National Parks, and found it useful during our time in the parks.)

Our friend Gordy Longhurst has lived in Oregon for decades and is a US citizen, but still thinks of himself as Canadian, which is preferable, in his view, to being American. He's a rabid hockey fan and former player and is also keen on skiing, so his enduring love for his native country is easy to understand. After hitting some of the high spots, so to speak, of the mountains and meadows of his youth, I know why he loves Canada.

That's Gordy on the right, living it up at Oregon's Mt. Bachelor, one

 of his favorite stateside ski spots.

Our return trip actually started in the town of Jasper, which bills itself as "the wonderful and formidable." Egads. Imagine the rumpus that must have erupted amongst that small town's population when formidable became part of the town's tagline. Tourism marketing gone wrong? We turned around in "formidable" Jasper and returned to Lake Louise, driving back over the Icefields Parkway rather than the longer route Gordy recommended, to reach another small town, Revelstoke, where we spent the night.

PK traced the route out of Lake Louise back to the US as he and Gordy conferred during pre-trip planning. The redline tracing to the north was part of the recommended route but involved a couple extra days that we didn't have. 

Gordy said we had to see Takakkaw Falls, so we turned north off the Trans-Canada Hwy for a short but steep climb passing the roiling convergence of two glacier-fed mountain rivers, the Kicking Horse and Yoho.

This is a seriously steep road to the falls with a couple of switchbacks that require many vehicles to back up and reposition to make it around the bend. Trailers and big RVs not recommended!

          Takakkaw Falls tumbles 836 feet, not counting the  top section. It is Canada's

          second highest waterfall. The walk to its plunge pool was a paved stroll through

          a fragrant pine forest. 

Not too far down the Trans-Canada Hwy we ducked off the freeway again to see the natural bridges of the Kicking Horse River, a Canadian Heritage River. When I say "freeway" don't think of LA or Seattle or I-5 through Oregon. The Trans-Canada Hwy between Calgary and where we exited at Revelstoke offered stunning surprises one after another. As I mentioned in an earlier post about Canadian travel, we enjoyed a continuous peak-studded panorama for days on end.

This road cut  on the Trans-Canada Hwy isn't mentioned in the guidebooks, but it is impressive.

Gordy talked up Revelestoke, British Columbia, and we made a point to stay overnight. (At the Regent Hotel, very good.) But it was a Monday and pre-season (school was still in session) so that downtown wasn't quite buzzing yet. The area is gorgeous and is a year-round outdoor playground. Looked like great skiing, biking, rafting, hiking and so on. 

Photo of Revelstoke courtesy of the Internet's screenshot technology.

Our one-night stay offered just one indelible memory—the Colombia River flowing through town, so young and muscular, fresh off the Colombia Icefields. We crossed the Historic Revelstoke Bridge, the old-fashioned kind of bridge where you can see the rushing river through the grating.  

The next morning we were off on our last couple of days in BC, roaming amidst so many lakes and rivers, mountains and valleys, we couldn't keep them straight.

We took the free Shelton Bay ferry to Galena Bay, then east via 31A to Kaslo. That's our Four Wheel Camper on the right and two identical rental RVs to the left. Canadian roads were glutted with rental RVs. Highway 31A was one of our favorite backroads ever. Narrow, winding, hilly, and practically deserted, amidst lush scenery with lots of lakes and streams and numerous small groups of cyclists on road bikes. We took notes to plan a return trip, thinking a bike route could be cobbled together with 31A and various rails to trails routes. Maybe someday. After lunch in Kaslo, where I wish we could have spent the rest of the day and night, we continued to Nelson along Hwy. 31 and our thoughts of a longer road bike trip in that area were dashed. The scenery was fantastic but the bike-unfriendly narrow busy highway was not conducive to cycling dreams. 

This welcome sign pretty well shows the recreational richness of this area, which is well worth another visit. It's a great area not quite up the national park standards, but perfect for backroad sightseeing and opportunities to see what life is like in rural British Columbia. If we go again, we'll do so before school lets out in early summer or after it resumes in September. Our final Canadian camp was at a provincial park on Christina Lake. The camp host told us  that all sites were reserved starting the next day, when school let out, until the second week in September, when it resumes.

Earlier posts about Road Trip 2015

Banff and Jasper

Road Notes, first couple days across the Great Plains of Canada

Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Changing Times in North Dakota

Getting Along on the road, and Yellowstone Park

Riding the Trail of the Couer d' Alenes

Road tripping in the Four-Wheel Camper