Goat Mineral Lick and British Columbia Parks

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We were now leaving Alberta, Canada late in the evening and traveling as far as possible through the chain of three provincial parks along Route 1 in British Columbia towards Seattle Washington. The three parks were, in order, Yoho, Glacier and Revelstoke.

Shortly after entering Yoho, we saw a sign with a graphic of a mountain goat on a cliff, then several cars pulled to the side. It indicated a rocky salt lick that extended to the road itself and astonishingly we then viewed a family of goats at eye level, gnawing at the rock face to obtain whatever trace minerals it offered.

As it was very late in the evening, we basically had the scene to ourselves and a other few lucky observers and I was able to take quite a few photos. It was really interesting to closely watch how the elders trained the young goats to maneuver tricky toeholds on the tiny ledges.

Continuing on through Yoho, in the rainy and overcast late evening, we found the campgrounds on our Yoho map were not open yet. There was a side road to Emerald Lake which is reportedly quite beautiful but the weather forecast and our timetable didn’t work for us.

We forged on to BC’s Glacier Park. This is another spectacular area that we really didn’t appreciate as it was now nearly dark. The extremely steep grade of the highway was shared with tractor trailers, there still were no open campgrounds and by the time we emerged out of the park, we were ready to find any place we could spend the night.

That’s when we saw a commercial RV/Tenting Campground, Canyon Hot Springs and pulled in. It took a while for the proprietess to come to the office but there was an open tent site. In fact, all the tent sites were open and we were given a remote space near the main highway but it was a place to stay. She explained that we had arrived early season and nothing opened until the end of June.

We were so tired, we just slept in the back of the truck and left when we woke in the morning. As we departed, I saw there were many RVs in another part of the very large complex and most visitors were there for the hot springs. Hot Springs were also the main draw for the last of the three parks, Revelstoke, but again, we were headed back to the US and didn’t stop to enjoy the amenities.

Our focus was now on getting to Seattle, Washington, and to prepare for the next leg of our journey, the Inside Passage of Alaska.

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