Day 16; Monday September 26th

Golden-Field-Yoho-Lake Louise-Banff

The view from our window this morning is disappointing as there is a thick fog. We have a very luxurious breakfast in the busy Ramada Inn and take our time over it. My next experience is a visit to a walk-in clinic, a first for me in this country. Just as well, as it is still foggy and it would not do to start our drive right away because we wouldn’t be able to see anything on one of the most spectacular stretches of our trip. I meet two receptionists, a nurse, and a doctor. The longest wait is at the pharmacy, as if pills are still hand-made and all the ingredients weighed out carefully and double checked. But I get the help and medication I need in a relatively short time, which is great.

We have a coffee in historic downtown, frequented by locals, and only at noon do we leave Golden. At least the fog has lifted and the mountains are clearly visible.

Along Highway 1

We take route 1, initially along Kicking Horse River. It is indeed a spectacular drive. We turn into a road leading to a creek just to be able to take some pictures of the amazing autumn colours and the white mountain tops. The highway goes through Yoho National Park. Once in Fields, we turn left towards the Natural Bridge and Emerald Lake, a lake which is of an astonishingly deep emerald colour. The “natural bridge” – a rock formation which forms a bridge over a waterfall - attracts many tourists, in cars and RV’s, but is worth seeing.

Natural Bridge

On the banks of Emerald Lake is a holiday village and a conference center with stunningly beautiful views of the lake. People take out canoes, although it isn’t very warm and a fine drizzle has started. We walk partly around the lake, admiring the remaining flowers in an alpine meadow.

Emerald Lake

It is a very restful and quiet place, and I wouldn’t mind at all spending a week in a cottage here.

We return to Fields, noticing the long freight trains in the station and turn off the main road again to go to Tatakkaw Falls. The weather changes and it now rains seriously.  We stop to see the upper spiral train tunnel, and are lucky that one of the trains we saw in Fields is creeping through it. It is a very unusual sight, to see the front and the tail of the train on different levels.

Upper Spiral Train Tunnel

We also stop at the confluence of the Kicking Horse River and the Yoho River, each with a different colour, but we have to huddle together as the temperature has dropped considerably.

Tatakkaw Falls

The waterfalls are reached via hair pin curves in the road. Some vehicles go backwards up one leg of the bends and forwards on the next one, because they can’t easily negotiate the sharp turns. It is something which I have never experienced in Europe on the steep climbs of the Swiss and Austrian mountains.

The waterfalls are awe inspiring, but it is raining hard and it is very cold and we have to hike the last stretch to see the falls well enough. Once we have dutifully done that, we go back to our car as soon as we can, drenched!

Down Kakattaw Falls

We return to highway 1 and are in luck, because in the lower spiral tunnel we see a train simultaneously on three different levels!

On to Lake Louise, through the rain. We can’t find suitable and affordable accommodation, so drive on to Banff, and after a false start on a strip with only expensive and very up-market hotels, we find an adequate motel a few steps from the emerald Bow River within walking distance of the center of town. It is no longer pouring, but still wet and very cold. No view at all of the high mountains which are supposedly the most spectacular of the Rockies. Banff looks attractive as it has no loud neon signs and ads, but instead a manicured high street which reminds me of Aspen, the fronts of the shops in chalet style. The number of Japanese and Chinese surprises me. Shop owners and motel owners, hardly any of them are true Canadians. Most of them are Asian or at least foreign, judging by their difficulties with the language. After a bit of window shopping, we find a nice Italian restaurant and share a pizza, hoping for sun and a view tomorrow.