Today is one of our many upcoming significant driving days. We're heading from Banff to Kokanee Creek Provincial Park, down on the shores of Kootenay Lake, near a town called Nelson. We've planned a few stops to break up the drive and make sure we get our full dose of incredible scenery along the way.
We started the trip by taking a short detour back to Lake Louise, to visit Lake Moraine which we'd missed last time we were here. On the highway approaching Lake Louise, we passed several large electronic signs telling us that the lake parking was full and that we should use the overflow parking and take the shuttle. We ignored all of them and drove up to the Lake Moraine turn-off. The road up to the lake was closed when we got there, with big barriers saying that the parking was full, and signs directing us back onto the highway to the overflow parking. Who saw that one coming?
We drove several km's back down the road to the overflow parking and got on a school bus which took us on the 20-minute drive up to Lake Moraine. The sun was searingly hot in the overflow carpark, but luckily we were able to get straight on the bus. The line for the busses to Lake Louise was huge, with people probably waiting in the heat for 15 minutes.
Lake Moraine was incredible. We took a short path up to the top of a rock pile (which was actually the terminal moraine) and took lots of photos of the beautiful view down over the lake. This is another glacially fed lake, so the water is the same unbelievable cloudy blue that we'd seen at Peyto Lake, and others on our journey. There were lots of people here, all perching themselves on rocks and taking photos in interesting poses.
Our next stop was the Paint Pots, which are a system of acidic cold-water springs. The springs bring iron oxide to the surface, which is deposited in the earth as ochre. We walked for 20 minutes or so to the ochre beds, where the bright red & brown earth contrasted with the green grass to create a striking sight.
From there we drove to Radium Hot Springs, a small village of under a thousand people built around another naturally occurring hot spring. The area was named after the radioactive element when an analysis of the water showed that it contained small traces of radon which is a decay product of radium. Apparently, swimming in the pools for half an hour exposes you to a level of radiation around 10 times higher than background levels, which sounds scary but is actually inconsequential. I felt like this town had been pulled right out of a video game like Borderlands. We stopped here for some lunchtime burritos, but didn't hang around long as it was about 35 degrees outside!
Now that all the items on our list were checked off we headed straight for our next campground at Kokanee Creek. The drive from Radium took about 4 hours, during which we climbed and descended many mountains, and burned through many chapters of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. We passed the Kokanee Beer brewery, which produces Canada's best selling lager (Glacier fresh!). Eventually, we arrived at the campground, just after dark. We set up camp on a surprisingly large site, nestled in amongst a forest of very tall trees.
We're already starting to miss the mountains and cool alpine night air.