Golden is golden (at least to us)

Today is our rest day and we got up a little later than usual in spite of the 2 hours time difference. We did our laundry before setting off to church (OK, bite me). We decided to check out the local Alliance Church. Golden being a pretty small town and we didn't expect a large church. We were not disappointed, it turned out to be a pretty small church. We did feel at home though, the people were very friendly. The service was very casual and the pastor was also the lead guitarist of the worship team. The service was unusual in that they had a live video link with a large Youth Convention being held in Edmonton where the church's young people were. This proved to be very interesting. Miles McPherson, a pastor from a very large church in San Diego called the Rock Church and Academy was the speaker. We really enjoyed the service and Miles McPherson's message. After church we went back to our hotel and had lunch. The weather today started our overcast and on the cool side by the way.

After lunch we decided to drive to Lake Louise and stop whenever we saw an interesting spot along the way. Along the way we spotted two mountain goats just a bit off the highway. That was really cool because mountain goats are normally pretty shy creatures. As we crossed the mountain pass, the weather started to get a lot cooler again and it started to drizzle a bit. Nevertheless we continued on hoping to drive into better weather. We wanted to go to the Takakkaw Falls in Yoho National Park. Unfortunately, the access road was closed partway down. We did enjoy the scenery though up to that point. We got down to the Kicking Horse river and admired the wild mountain river. These rivers, and also the lakes that they feed, are a turquoise colour. This is caused by the silt that these rivers carry down from the mountains. There was a big mountain here called Mount Stephen (shown behind Omie). That of course reminded us of our oldest grandson and we just had to take a picture.

On we went to visit Lake Louise. We were here about 20 or so years ago with our good friends Ron and Tina and wanted to visit both Moraine Lake and Lake Louise again. We had no trouble finding both lakes but man was it cold and miserable today at those locations. By now the temperature had dropped to 5 deg C and a stiff wind was blowing off the mostly ice covered lakes. We didn't stay very long, just long enough to take a few pictures. Having seen these lakes in nice sunny weather makes such a difference. So we were a little disappointed but nevertheless glad we went.

On our way back, we stopped along Hwy 1 to look at an interest point where you could see the spiral tunnel. This is one of a number of spiral train tunnels that are carved into the mountains to allow trains to ascend or descend gradually. We happened to see a train come along to illustrate this. Unfortunately for us, the train was not very long. Long trains can be seen entering one tunnel and emerge from the tunnel before the last cars enter the tunnel. Anyway, here are two pictures of the same train. The one shows the last cars entering and the second shows the locomotive emerging. Click on the pictures to get a larger image to see it better. The tunnel describes about 288deg.

Also at this spot we met a couple of Dutch ladies who, with two more ladies, were vacationing in British Columbia. They were travelling with two motor homes. We had an interesting discussion with them. They were staying here for 4 weeks camping (brrrr) in the National Parks.

After we returned to Golden we were golden, the sun was again shining and the temperature back up to 15 deg C. We had a nice dinner and feel quite relaxed. That's about it again for now, "tot ziens luitjes" (see you soon folks).