Fwd: Day 8

Lynn writes good travel notes.

Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lynn Kirby <lkirby39@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 10:44 PM
Subject: Day 8
To: Lynn Kirby <lskirby@charter.net>, Bill Kirby <olderkirby@gmail.com>

Hi,

What a day we've had today! Long, busy, and lots of fun.

This morning we saw 2 more herds of elk. They had young with them--cute! There was also a male in one group, with velvet on his antlers. But the funny part was that two of them were standing at someone's front door. It looked like they were waiting to get in. But we realized that they were actually eating all the flowers in the planters on the porch.

It seems that most people and all businesses have beautiful flower pots, raised beds, and hanging planters filled with a wild profusion of flowers. My theory is that the winters around here are so long that everyone is starved for color, and they make up for it with flowers. It's gorgeous.

We saw four waterfalls today. The first, Athabasca Falls, was amazing. It had a huge amount of water and was just thrilling to see. I could have spent the day there. The second, Tangled Falls, was very different--a series of long rivulets running down a mountain crossing each other on the way down. The weeping wall was a huge stone mountain face with water on it, not exactly a waterfall. 

Takkakaw Falls was an interesting rush of water running down a mountain, hitting something, and spraying off in different directions. But what was most interesting about it was the ride to it. It was very far off the main road, with many switchbacks. In one section, 2 of them were too tight for buses, so the bus went up (and down, later) backwards on one of them. This was really scary, but I had been forewarned and took those pills of mine in advance. It was terrifying for many people on the bus. It would have been a little less tricky if there hadn't been other vehicles going up and down at the same time. Bystanders cheered and applauded when we got through with no mishaps. 

We have been in 5 national parks in Canada's Rockies, 3 on each side. On the east are Jasper, Banff, and Kootenay. On the west are Yoho, Glacier, and Revelstoke Mountain. We were in 5 of them today, all but Kootenay. They are different from each other, but they all have huge mountains.

We visited three lakes, each a somewhat different color, due to different minerals in them. We passed a mountain that looked just like the Prudential symbol.

We watched a train go through a pair of spiral tunnels. These tunnels take the trains inside the mountain to slow it dow. Before these tunnels were built, many people died from runaway trains going down the steep slopes.

As we drove west, we went through the quite a few avalanche areas. Winter snows around here average about 32 feet a winter. The record was 80 feet. To protect motorists and trains, they have built "snow sheds," structures that cover the roads and tracks that the snow keeps going down without damaging anything. 

We went out to dinner with a group tonight and had a great time. We had a mixup with our rooms that took a couple of hours to solve, but it got solved. And as soon as the dryer finishes, I'm off to bed. 

Love, Lynn and Bill