Back in the States!!

We arrived back in the States Sunday afternoon and had to stop at the first Wal-Mart Supercenter we saw!! We are at Thousand Trails park - Leavenworth in Washington. We will be here till Sunday and then going over to Crescent Bar in Quincy, WA. Misty and the girls have been spending time over on the coast and met us here, so they are parked next door. It was great to see them again.

Relaxing in British Columbia

On Friday, we walked the nature trail around the park and up the hill.
This picture is the campground and the lake and Marquis on the trail.



Then we went into Vernon to shop some and look around.

We believe our little friends are a litter of marmots. We have seen 5 little ones playing together in the campsite next to us. Here is an adult.


This is one of the young ones, taking a nap under a tree in the cool recently watered grass. He's about as flat as he can get!

This is a different litter on the row down from us.


While walking in the park, we saw this little one, we think it's a weasel.

Thurdsay camped at Provincial Park on Lake

We drove from Field to Kekuli Bay Provincial Park south of Vernon, BC. It is on Kalamaika Lake and is beautiful. This photo is taken from our site.



Here are some friends at the campsite next to us.

Walking/Biking to Takakkaw Falls on Wednesday

We woke up and the sun was shining!!!

Today, we decided to go see the Falls. Yoho Valley Road isn't open yet to motorized vehicles, so we decided to take our bikes. It was 13 kilometers!!...........uphill!!

Here is a photo of the mountains with the river below. We had started out at the river level. This was about an hour into our trip.



This was our first view of the falls. It's the 2nd highest waterfall in Canada with a height of 1250'.

We made it to the parking area. Whew!!




Gerald walked over to the bottom of the falls and got this photo.



Now, we didn't ride the entire way. We walked most of the uphills and coasted the downhills. It took 3 1/2 hours. I was exhausted. A very hot shower was wonderful when I got back to the campground.

Jasper to Field, BC on Tuesday

We left Jasper and headed down the Icefield Parkway. We saw our first mountain goat.



It rained at first and then stopped by the time we got to the Icefields Centre.




We took a Snowcoach out to the glacier and that was really fun. We froze, but had a blast.



These are our feet standing on the 1000' thick glacier.


I took these along the way into British Columbia.



We stopped at the Spiral Tunnels, an engineering marvel with circling train tunnels to avoid the steep grade.

We got to Field, BC, in Yoho National Park and stayed at Monarch Campground. We could not get a satellite signal because of this mountain due south of us!!

Sunday was a fun day!

Yesterday we drove out to Medicine Lake and Maligne Lake. It was raining when we got to Maligne Lake and Gerald trotted from the parking lot down to the lake for a minute. The most fun was driving since we saw so many animals. Twice we saw black bears, but I didn't get a good photo of the 2nd one. We saw elk, deer, a bald eagle, big horned sheep and a moose.








This is Medicine Lake...very interesting. It drains by the fall/winter through an underground river system and fills in the spring from rains and snow melt.






This is what he thinks of tourists taking photos. Click to enlarge.






Lac Beauvert

Nothing much to post

On Friday, we went to town and had lunch and found a fenced dog park for Marquis to run in. We walked around town and shopped a little. It rained on and off.

Saturday, it rained all day and we didn't go anywhere except to walk the dog.

Today, the forecast is for rain, but we hope to do some sightseeing from the Jeep.

There are Elk at our Campsite

This morning, we moved to a different campsite in the same campground and there is a herd of about 15 elk here. There are 3-4 babies, so we have to be very careful walking the dog.

At the campground here, about 98% of rv's are ClassC rentals, so they all clear out in the morning to go sightseeing and all come back in the evening. That's why it looks like we are the only one here. When we moved over to this site, the loop was empty and by evening, it was full. It was the same at Lake Louise with everyone leaving in droves mid-morning and then returning later. There are lots of folks from Europe. We've met some from The Netherlands, Germany, England and Switzerland. They are amazed at our motorhome and take photos of us as we drive by.










We drove into Jasper and walked around some. It is a really neat town, very European in building style.

Ice Fields Parkway to Jasper Nat'l Park

Today, we drove up the Ice Fields Parkway from Lake Louise to Jasper National Park. We saw some beautiful mountains and some of the time we were in the snow and rain at the top.





This is Columbia Glacier. Notice the buses that take you out onto the glacier. They look like bugs from a distance.



We saw some sheep along the road. One was lying down and didn't get up when we slowly drove by.




Our first bear! Sorry for the poor photos, they were through the windshield and then through the screen window since we couldn't stop.




Here is our campsite at Whistler Campground in Jasper. Our datastorm friends will appreciate the space between the two trees!