Kootenay National Park

Sunday after church we left our campground in Golden, British Columbia, and headed further south along highway 95. We are traveling in a valley beside the Columbia River with mountains on both side of us. We are headed to our new camping spot at a golf course in the tiny town of Edgewater. It's a beautiful place with golf fairways all around us, and wildlife that comes to visit.

A tree near one of the fairways is dropping its apples, and Mark spotted this buck with one in his mouth.

The golf course has seven full-hook-up sites, and we have one of those sites for the next four nights. After spending the last month in national park camp sites or boondocking in the icefield, we have a big pile of dirty clothes to tackle during this stay. Our next door neighbor is leaving in the morning, so he gave us the rest of his tickets to the Radium Hot Springs just down the road. So we thanked him profusely and headed for a soak in the mineral hot springs on this chilly evening. We didn't take the camera to the pool, as we assumed we would take pictures later. But we did get this picture of the "cool pool" that we also enjoyed.

We are loving our golf course camping spot, but we would have really preferred to be in the Village of Radium Hot Springs. But all of their campgrounds were booked many months ago when we were making reservations. Radium Hot Springs is the gateway city to Kootenay National Park, and we want to do several hikes there. We have already visited the east side of this park when we were staying in Lake Louise Village, but now we get to see the west entrance of Kootenay and its impressive Sinclair Canyon.

Through these tall canyon walls is carved a winding two-lane highway. Since this is a major thorough-fare, everything from motor homes to 18-wheelers roar through this narrow canyon right beside hikers like us. In fact, it was difficult to get a picture of the canyon without a vehicle in it.

One day we hiked the Juniper Sinclair Canyon Trail that took us to the very top of those canyon walls.

From the trail, we could see that there is a waterfall under the ledge that supports the highway through that narrow canyon.

It was hard to get close to that waterfall, but we tried. We walked all the way down to the bottom of the falls, but it was hidden around the corner from us.

After being down below the highway, we once again hiked to the top of the other canyon wall on the Redstreak Trail. That gave us views of the mountains around us--and the fenced viewpoint we had just left on top of the facing canyon wall.

We have heard about all the mountain sheep that wander around the Village of Radium Hot Springs, but we hadn't seen any. When we hiked up a ridge on this trail, we finally caught a glimpse of those elusive sheep.

The three ewes don't sport the massive horns that we've seen on the rams. But they were friendly, and seemed to be as interested in us as we were in them.

It was a great hiking loop with high mountain views and low waterfall views and a little wildlife too!

After driving deeper into Kootenay National Park, we stopped to see Olive Lake, which is about the color of a--well-- olive.

We could see some blue in the sky as we started another hike--a four and a half mile loop to Dog Lake. But first we had to cross the suspension bridge over Kootenay River.

It's a great hike through the trees with some elevation gain. But when we got to Dog Lake, our blue sky was completely covered with clouds that had an angry gray color to them.

Sure enough, it started raining shortly after we left the lake. That meant that we hiked the last couple miles in a steady rain on a trail that began to look more like a river. Denisa had her rain coat in her backpack, but Mark had taken his out to dry after his shower at Wapta Falls a couple days ago. So we will compare the picture we took earlier in the day when Mark was dry and looking forward to his hike . . .

to Mark on the same bridge--now soaked to the skin at the end of the hike.

It continued to rain the rest of the day, so we had more time to stay inside the motor home and work on that laundry! But we also found out that this big rain caused flooding to the water source for the Radium Hot Springs. When we tried to make a return visit for more soaking (and pictures) in the hot mineral pool, it was closed. In fact, the entire Village of Radium Hot Springs has to boil its water, and the hot springs was "closed indefinitely" when we left the area. (P.S. We made the drive to the Fairmont Hot Springs 23 miles south, and found it is a similar sized facility. But instead of the $7 fee per person at Radium, the Fairmont charges $23 per person! We decided we didn't need to visit the hot springs after all!)