Day
61 – 7-11-15 Saturday We slept good even though a couple of large
truck pulled in and stopped for the night and made some noise.
We
ate breakfast and departed our “luxury RV resort” about 8:30AM.
We were not sure where we would stop tonight, just planned to drive
until we found something interesting. We knew a couple of the towns
along the way had campgrounds with hookups which we needed for
tonight. Our fresh water tank was getting low after 4 nights of
camping with no hookups.
We went under three animals crossings over highway 1. Highway 1 is a 4 lane divided highway, so they have built an overpass for the wildlife to cross safely over the highway. We saw the same thing when we lived in Germany. We
turned off highway 1 onto highway 93 and continued to drive through
the beautiful Kootenay Range of the Canadian Rockies. Lots of up and
down hills, several 6 degree downgrades and at least 3, 8 degree and
1, 11 degree downgrade just before getting into Radium Hot Springs, Just
before we got to Radium Hot Springs there were two mountain goats on
the highway.
It looked like the road just outside of Radium Hot Springs had been
carved right out of a solid, very tall mass of rock. There was a
large hot spring pool on the edge of town that was up near the side
of the mountain. There were lots of people in the pool as we passed.
The town was not very big and had a kind of a Bavarian look to it.
The design of some of the buildings and lots of large hanging pots of
flowers hung out front of many of the businesses reminded us of
Germany. We kind of wanted to stop and look around but could not find
a place to park so we moved on. From that point on the scenery became
much more open flat land with the Rockies Mountains in the
background. We passed several large fields of hay and what I believe
was Alfalfa. They were using long rolling irrigation systems in the
hay fields to irrigate. There was a large river behind the fields so
they were probably pumping the water from the river. We went through
one community named Canal Flats. Good name because the land was as
flat as a pancake in that area. We stopped to fuel up for the last
time in Canada in a community called Hoodoo Mountain.
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| Wildlife Overpass |
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| View from highway 93 |
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| View from highway 93 |
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| Mountain Goats |
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| Coming into Radium Hot Springs |
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| Coming into Radium Hot Springs |
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| Radium Hot Springs |
We
decide to checkout a town called Kimberley because they had a fairly
large campground with hookups name Kimberely Riverside Campground. We
checked in and probably got the last unreserved site that we could
have fit into, site 51. The Canadians like to camp and this being a
weekend they were out in droves. Their summers are so short they like
to get out and make the best of it when the weather is nice. We got a
full hookup site. We setup, had a light lunch and drove back into
town with the Jeep.
We
have seen a lot of wildlife on this trip but had not seen any deer
until today. As we drove into town we began to see mule deer grazing
on grass in people's yards and up on the hills behind some of the
businesses. Before we got back to the campground we saw 10 deer, 3
bucks with nice racks still in velvet, 4 does, one of the does had
one fawn and another had twin fawns. These were all in town. We got
some nice photos of them but dumb me had taken the memory card out of
the camera when I was uploading photos to this blog and didn't put
the card back in the camera, so the photos are in the camera internal
memory and without a special cable that is at home I can't upload
them to the blog.
I
saw a billboard for a restaurant in town that served schnitzel so I
asked the clerk at the campground about it. She said there were three
in town. We drove up the hill to the one she said was the best, but
they only take reservations and they don't open until 5PM and it was
just 4PM. The build is over 300 years old and was dismantled in
Germany and moved here and reassembled. We parked at the Platzl in
the center of town and walked through the pedestrian mall area where
a lot of businesses are located. Many of them had a Bavarian look to
them. There were lots of large hanging baskets of flowers and flowers
planted in raised areas in the pedestrian mall. We talked to a couple
of ladies and they told us there were a number of people in the town
originally from the Germany area. When the mines in the area closed
the town people wanted to save the town so they decided to convert
that part of town to look like a Bavarian Village to attract tourist.
We stopped at Chef Bernards Restaurant in the Platzl that had an
early bird tourist special (Jagerschnitzel, with potatoes, red
cabbage and apple strudel with crème sauce for $12.95).
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| Jagerschnitzel |
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| Apple Strudel |
Then
we found a bicycle shop in the Platzl, so I got a new tube for my
bicycle. There will be a Medieval Festival in town tomorrow so we
will attend part of that. We went to several Medieval Festivals when
we lived in Germany.
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| Chef Bernard's - we ate here |
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| Put a $1 in a slot and a man comes out and sings |
One
the way back to the campground we stopped at a store that was selling
fresh vegetables and organic food. We noticed they didn't have any
lights on inside only to find out the power had just gone out in the
entire town due to a blown transformer and would be out for at least
2 hours. We got several items and returned to the campground and we
have no power here either. Power came back on at 9PM.
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