Today is 'Boo' the Bear Day!

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Got picked up first thing in morning in a really nice van by Berett. There is only the two of us so we are pretty happy. The van is really cool, the sliding doors in the back can be opened and closed just by pressing a button on the wall inside, or even better, can be opened using the door remote! I know, I am easily impressed!

We were meant to go to Lake Louise as part of our tour, but because we were going there tomorrow he substituted that for a couple of extra lakes. The advantage of not having to share your tour with 45 other people (insert smiley face here!).

SPIRAL TUNNELS

First stop is the Spiral Tunnels. We went through here on the Rocky Mountaineer, so it is great to see it from a different perspective. These tunnels were designed after so many trains de-railed after gaining too much speed coming downhill. At one stage, back in the day, passengers were taken off the trains at the top of the hill, taken down to the bottom in buses before meeting up with the train and re-boarding to continue their trip.

EMERALD LAKE

We went to Emerald Lake, big tick for yet another beautiful Canadian lake. The colour was indescribably, such a beautiful clear turquoise. It was surrounded by forest and there were canoes on the lake.

NATURAL BRIDGE

Nearby is Natural Bridge, where the water from the river has worn the rock into a bridge (I know duh, it’s self explanatory, but I’m a woman and we have 20,000 words to use a day!). Our guide was telling us about another time he was here and there was a guy doing his best Karate Kid moves on the rock, getting a lot of strange looks and I’m sure by now someone has put him on You Tube! There was a lady trying to get her very terrified dog to first walk over the bridge above the raging water and then once she dragged him over she almost pushed the poor terrified shaking dog into the noisy, freezing water below, poor thing!

TAKAKAW FALLS

Next stop was the Takakaw Waterfalls, the 2nd biggest falls in Canada at 265 metres. It’s only a short walk from the carpark, looks impressive and is quite loud. We saw some squirrels here and could have watched them for ages, but there were other things waiting for us to see.

On the way back from the falls we saw a family of 3 elk in a small patch of snow. This is how I pictured Canada - although if I could have swapped it for a bear catching salmon in a river that would have made Tim’s (and my) day! The snow was in a small avalanche area.

At the same spot we saw a Hairy Marmot, looks like big fat cat with a short tail. It was licking the salts and minerals off the underside of a van that pulled up, these people weren’t going anywhere for a while!

GOLDEN

After an easy, scenic 1 hour drive we arrive at the Kicking Horse Mountain Lodge in the quaint litttle town of Golden. It’s a teeny town. We went for a Gondala ride to the top of the mountain and had a delicious lunch at the Eagle Eye Restaurant. The view was spectacular and we watched the clouds come in over the top of the mountains. It started raining, but would have been awesome if it snowed!

After lunch our guide walked us down to the snow and of course the first thing Tim did was grab a handful of snow, squish it into a ball, lined me up and then whack, it connected of course! I’d like to say that I got my own back for all women out there, but as you all know, I’m a shocker when it comes to catching and throwing - and obviously ducking out of the way it would seem too… so now I’m cold AND wet, but still having a great time. All the while I kept remembering what Mum said Oma and Opa always told her about making snow balls - do not make snow balls around rocks to through at your sisters!

BOO THE BEAR

We caught the Gondala back down and then caught the chairlift half way back up to visit Boo the bear. It took a little while to find him but when we did, we got to watch him for ages. He was sitting eating flowers, not quite the man eating picture that first comes to mind when thinking of grizzly bears. Tim didn’t care, he finally got to see a bear!!!

His enclosure is 22 acres big, so plenty of space to do ‘bear stuff’. He lives on his own, but a few years ago he did get out and found himself a girlfriend. Although once she had enough of him he was left to his own devices and it turns out he wasn’t such a fan and headed back to ‘home’.

They have even made a place for him to hibernate in but he still digs holes around the place leading up to winter and then he’s relocated closer to the time for the big sleep.

He’s 9 years old and stands 7 feet tall on his back legs, so now he’s a 7 foot tall, flower eating grizzly; sounds a little more imposing… he’s a fast walker (as we discovered trying to follow him from the outside of the fence) and he can run up to 40kph.

We got back to the hotel about 7:30pm. Had dinner in our room, so nice having the microwave!

I went downstairs for an exciting evening of laundry while Tim went to the gym. I met a woman from Melbourne whose son and his girlfriend works in hotel, like I said it is like a little Oz here!

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