Friday, July 08, 2011

Yoho National Park

Leaving Banff National Park, we traveled just a few miles to Yoho National Park. While Banff is located in Alberta, Yoho is located in British Columbia. We can imagine you are getting tired of all the superlatives, so you should be aware that “yoho” is a Cree Indian expression of awe! See, even the Indians think this place is neat. Yoho has 28 peaks that are over 9,000 feet tall.

After locating a campground, we decided to take the short 25 minute drive to Takakkaw Falls. Takakkaw means “magnificent” in Cree and when you view the pictures we took, you will see why. These falls are among the tallest in Canada.

One thing we were not prepared for were the switch backs on the road going up to Takakkaw. We encountered a first for us. One of the switchbacks was so sharp, we could not make the turn. We had pull up and back a couple of times in order to continue forward. While this would not have been too much of a problem in normal times, the rainy, slick roads (along with lots of traffic coming and going) made this trip a “white knuckler”.

I can’t begin to tell you how many photographs I have taken of others!

You don’t think they take bears serious here? This is an electrified fence around the campsite at Lake Louise (I guess to keep bears out or humans in…not sure which!)

In order to allow trains to get up the steep grade, they built a series of spiral tunnels for them to climb their way up the mountain. Note there is one on the left and another on the right. I think there are a total of 8 tunnels.

Note the graphic superimposed on this information board. This is the path of the train for these two tunnels!