(written on the 26th from notes taken previously)
Whoops! Apparently the recreation site we stayed at last night was a day-use only area.
😅
One would think it would have been hard to miss, it was in huge letters right at the top of the sign going in… Except the sign was perpendicular to the entrance, so I didn’t even see it when I was coming in in the dark.
Oops. 🙃
It was a nice place to stay, nonetheless.
We did our normal morning stuff, and then headed back down the road toward the main highway from the lake that we had driven up to.
Shortly after leaving recreation site, we ran into a couple of ladies who were walking down the road picking up trash. I guess they live on houses right on the lake shore, and every fall, they walk down the road from their house to the bottom to pick up trash from the people who littered, whether purposefully or accidentally.
There was quite a bit of trash to gather up, and we pulled over to offer to haul the trash bags full of trash out, but they declined the offer and just said they were going to take the trash back up.
Awesome ladies for doing that. Crappy that they have to do it because of all the litter. 😕
The plan for today was to drive over to the next valley over between more mountain ranges, and to take one of the old style fairies across the lakes, so we got about 45 minutes, or so, into that drive When I shared with my mom that the fairies that they use are actually the big kind, like you would use to cross Puget Sound in Washington.
Knowing that, my mom lost all interest going over there in order to take a ferry. I concurred, as driving your car onto a boat in the holding Bay and going across the lake isn’t anything new, nor is it very interesting. If it had been The same kind of experience she had years ago where the car drives out onto a little flat platform that they ferry across a rushing River, then that would have been different.
So, knowing what ferry held in store, we decided to turn around, go back the way we came and figure it out from there.
The day was looking like it had potential to actually be clear skies, and I had been super bummed about missing out on seeing the Super craggy mountain peaks that I had been wanting to see since the beginning of the trip to Canada. Of course, I did get to see Mount Robson in all of its blender, and that was definitely breathtaking, but the clouds rolled in, and the storms came, and they hid all the other craggy peaks that I was hoping to see.
So I was pretty bummed about that, and we had a decision to make: the weather was decent, with the potential for clear skies from about 4:00 p.m. until sundown back the biggie mountains of Banff National Park and that area and what not. So we could risk it for the biscuit and drive over to Banff, which was about 3 and 1/2 hours away, as I recall, Aunt and hope that we were able to catch a glimpse of the craggy mountains.
That would require the weather report to be accurate, and… well… We all know weather reports can be highly unreliable, especially when you’ve got gigantic mountains that make their own weather.
The other thought that we had was to try taking that back road through the middle of the mountains that we had thought about taking the night before but hadn’t because it was supposed to get down below freezing and possibly snow up there.
So we were mulling that over as we headed back to Cranbrook from where we had gone to before turning around.
We got gas again in Cranbrook, topping off, as per usual, in order to be as well prepared in the wilderness as possible. You never know what might happen, and even if you don’t run out of gas for the trip, maybe you need some gasoline for some emergency purpose or something, so I always want to be as prepared as possible.
Anyway, we settled on the decision to take the dirt road out into the middle of nowhere, in the hopes that maybe that would give us a better chance of seeing some wildlife, as yet, we had seen bears or moose or mountain lions or anything like that.
Just the owl that my mom and I both saw and the two wolves that I saw.
The road to the middle of nowhere began at Fort Steele, And wound its way all over in the Foothills. At first it was a super smooth Road, but after a bit, got a little more dicey. Not too bad, but something you couldn’t just raise a round on.
There was a super old cemetery that we stopped at, for minors from the, I think it was.
And there was a point where we had to drive Rover across a creek that ran over the road, but Rover did just fine, and we kept right on going.
We wound through the hills, stopping to take pictures along the way many times, for probably about 2 and 1/2 hours?
Until we got to a turn off where one fork was going to a random horse ranch in the middle of nowhere, like a trail riding company, or something like that, and the other fork was continuing on the way we were going, except the road went from being decent to being something that was probably more appropriate as a four-wheeler or side-by-side trail.
It got so narrow that the branches and bushes were scraping against Rover, Aunt And the makeup of the road got so bad Dad after going over several Rocky obstacles, think 4×4 off-roading, I finally stopped Rover all together, shut off the engine, and headed up the trail to scout out what I was getting myself into.
We had probably only come 100 yds or so up the trail from the horse split off At that point.
I walked up the trail probably another 100 yards, my mom following, and it was apparent pretty quickly Dad it would not be a smart decision to try to continue on. We had already been driving for multiple hours in the simpler terrain, and we were only, maybe a third of the way to Lussier Hot Springs
😅
Stymied.
I had been optimistic that maybe we could both do this trip through the back roads in the foothills And make it back to Banff in time to see beautiful mountains
Retracing steps
With my overall negativity, I was feeling pretty crappy at this point. We had chosen to go into the Foothills on that back road to hopefully see wildlife, but it had turned out to be such a tiny Canyon with steep hills that there wasn’t really much terrain that would have been conducive to wild animals, and now we had spent hours already and had to completely retrace our steps.
I was just feeling like everything kept going sideways all the time.
My mom, on the other hand, is like the picture of positivity. She’s grateful for everything, and sees the silver lining and everything everywhere all the time.
I’d be a lot happier and healthier if I could do that. 😅
Still, we retraced our steps and crossed our fingers and hoped that maybe we might make it back to Banff National Park and that area in time to see beautiful peaks, still crossing our fingers that the weather report will hold out.
After retracing our steps down The mountain on the dirt road, we headed north toward Radium Hot Springs, At which point we headed east across one of the three highways that go eastish to westish across that massive mountain range.
Gratefully, the drive from Radium Hot Springs to Banff National Park did indeed yield some beautiful scenery. There were some visible peaks. We also got our first snowflakes up the trip.
❄️
I was still struggling with my overall negativity, that lets cool things happen, like when I realized it was not just a full moon but a hunter’s moon, the biggest moon of the year, rising up, instead of being excited, I was frustrated that my camera could capture the Vista.
Instead of enjoying the moment, I couldn’t enjoy it because I was so focused on making sure I was able to capture it.
Lesson to learn from.
I think I might have gotten a couple of okay shots of the Hunter’s Moon. Super cool to be the moon is so big, just bite my negativity.
Since we spent so much time trying to do our little nature drive, it was dark pretty quickly after we got to the other side of the mountain range. We had gotten some good pictures, but it was time to find a place to stay for the night.
There were a couple of places listed on freecampsite.net, And we ended up choosing Stony Nakoda resort and Casino, grateful that they let people park in their parking lot overnight without charging any fees or anything.
Thank you, Stony Nakoda Resort and Casino. 🙏
Crazy strong wind on this side of the range! Probably 30-40 mph? Maybe 50?I
I didn’t know my wind speeds, so who knows, but it’s strong! Come
Cold, too. 😅
And here we are, one more day in the books, and one more day of Canada.
😢
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 