Canadian Holiday
- Day 7 : Sunday 14th September
We decided that we needed to see something in the area of Lake Louise, so after breakfast we set off on a short drive south through the Bow River Parkway. After the bleakness of rock and ice and moraine the day before, this was very gentle scenery, with lots of greenery and the customary turquoise blue rivers. A few miles down, we stopped for a view and photo break – an area where we looked down to the river, with banks of trees on the other side, and halfway down the hill between us and the river ran a railway line – we felt sure that that spot had featured in a number of “come to Canada” publicity that we’d seen in the UK. Then a little way further on we stopped and started a walk up the Johnston Canyon; it was an easy trail up the canyon, with a fair-sized turquoise stream gushing down beside us. The path had been made easy – in some places an artificial walkway had been erected out of the rocks and over the stream. Up at the top was a turquoise waterfall (I keep mentioning the water colour, it’s just something that a visitor cannot fail to remark about) gushing through crevices in a rock. The walk there and back was a bit of exercise we felt we needed.
We drove back to the town of Lake Louise, and this time went up to the lakeside, had a look around and had a picnic. The lake is the same wonderful blue colour, and to see red kayaks against the blue water was worth a picture; alas, we discovered when back in the UK that the blue water appeared on the film to be a mid-grey colour, apparently a common feature of ordinary film – in only a few photos do we see the true colour of the water. We were joined for lunch by a handful of grey jays – literally, because they came and perched on our hands to eat our lunch!
After lunch, it was time to leave the high ground and head westwards … we had booked for the night at the town of Golden, so we started off. Shortly after leaving the Lake Louise area, we encountered rain, light at first becoming stronger and mistier as we went lower. The route wasn’t as inspiring as the Icefields Parkway, but we did stop and detour to Vermillion Lake. This wasn’t quite as inspiring in the rain as it might have been in the dry, but we were glad to have seen it. Here the water was less turquoise blue, as slightly turquoise blue-green. Then hastily back into the dry car, and down to Golden; the scenery got progressively worse as we got close, for the town is far from picturesque. After a bit of a hunt, we found our hotel and spent a dry evening indoors.