The next morning, we got to sleep in...a little.  We didn't have anyplace to be until 9:30 a.m., and that gave us an opportunity to get caught up on some sleep.

Our plan for the day was to go horseback riding; we had reservations for 10:00 a.m. at the Banff Stables and needed to be there at 9:30 to check in and pay.  After our two hour ride, we were going to take a nice, long scenic drive into Yoho National Park and beyond.

We left Johnston Canyon at about a quarter to 9:00 and started driving towards the town of Banff.  En route, we stopped several times at scenic overlooks so that we could take pictures and practice using the new lens on our Nikon D80.  The Bow River Valley proved to be a perfect place for that.

We arrived at the Banff Stables around 9:30 a.m., just in time to check in.  Almost right away, the horse poop jokes started; Mary has always been been amused by horse apples - especially on the trail - so being at the heart of it all made her giggle.

Once we had checked in, signed the waiver, and paid for our two-hour ride, we waited under a shade tree until we were called, shortly before 10:00 a.m.  While we waited, we watched the ranch hands cleaning up straw and horse apples and saddling up horses for the ride. Many of the ranch hands were young and had Australian accents; they were obviously college students on summer break.

At 10:00, our group was called into the corral so that we could be paired up with horses.  Since Mary was the smallest rider in our group, she was given the smallest horse - a brown and white horse named Perogy.  As soon as Mary had the reins, Perogy nudged her with his nose, and she giggled.  It was not the first time she had been this close to a horse, but it was certainly the first time she had ever had a hold of the reins and had control over one.  Her giggle, then, was one of nervousness and excitement.

John and I were each given horses - John had Soupy Jones, and I had Joshua, who looked a lot like Marcheta's horse Booger Blue.  Once everyone in our group had a horse, the group leader - who was already on his horse - gave us a quick and dirty horseback riding lesson.  "If you want your horse to go to the left, pull your reins to the left.  If you want your horse to go to the right, pull your reins to the right.  If you want your horse to stop, pull hard on the reins and say 'whoa'.  If you want your horse to go, give him a kick with your heels - don't worry, you won't hurt him.  And if your horse tries to eat leaves off the side of the trail, pull hard with your reins.  We don't want them eating while we are on the trail."

One by one, the ranch hands came around and helped us on our horses; and once we were ready, the horses followed the leader out of the corral and onto the trail.  With Mary being the smallest rider on our tour, the leader insisted that she ride directly behind him; and all the rest of us fell in line behind her.  On our way out of the stables, a photographer was waiting for us, to take our picture as we passed by.  These pictures would be available for sale when we returned.

As we left the stables, we rode out onto a trail that paralleled the road that went past Cave and Basin National Historic Site, which, of course, we had visited two days earlier.  We followed this trail for about ten minutes then soon came to a dirt road - a multi-use trail next to a small lake.  Here, we rode off to the left side of the road, near the trees, while bicyclists sped by us on the right.  It was cool and shaded next to the trees - and that was a welcome relief on such a hot morning - but it also created a tempting situation for the horses...particularly Mary's horse, who couldn't resist stopping for a snack every now and then.  Surprisingly, Mary handled her horse quite well; whenever Perogy stopped to eat, she pulled as hard as she could on his reins, and he fell back into line.

At the end of the first hour, we stopped for a break along the road, and our group leader jumped off of his horse to make sure that everyone was doing okay.  He made adjustments on stirrups and talked to the riders to make sure that everyone was enjoying the ride.  So far so good...

I think Mary was having the most fun of all.  This was the first time that she had ridden a horse where she was in control, and she was enjoying every minute of it.  Perogy wasn't making it easy for her either; apparently, his appetite was constantly getting him into trouble.  Mary didn't seem to mind, though, that her horse was difficult; it was all part of the adventure.

After our break, we turned onto a trail and started riding up a hill - a hill that John recognized as the one that he had hiked only two days earlier.  It was part of Cosmic Ray Road!  Now, we didn't take the road all the way up Sulphur Mountain, but we did go up about five hundred feet, crest the ridgeline, then ride back down the other side

The last fifteen minutes of our ride took us through a grassy field; there were no trees to provide us with shade, so it was very hot.  Fortunately, our ride was almost over, which meant that we didn't have to stay out in the heat for too long.

We rode into the stables at noon, at the end of our two hour ride.  One by one, the ranch hands helped us down from our horses and directed us over to the kiosk, where our pictures were waiting.  The pictures turned out so nice that we bought all three of them as souvenirs.  In Mary's picture, she was grinning from ear to ear; you can bet that there will be another horseback riding adventure in her future...and not just at Marcheta's house!

As we left the stables that afternoon, we were starving!  But before we could eat lunch, we had one important piece of business to take care of: we had to buy food for our upcoming backpacking adventure, which would begin the next morning.  We stopped at a Safeway in the town of Banff and purchased everything that we needed: canned meat, veggies, pasta and rice, cereal, oatmeal, macaroni and cheese, granola bars, and so on.  Once that was said and done, we drove to McDonald's and ordered our lunch to go; then, we drove back to Johnston Canyon to drop our groceries off at the cabin, before embarking on our next adventure.

Since our first backpacking trip was going to take place in Yoho National Park, John thought it might be a good idea to pay a visit to the Yoho Visitor's Center to check on trail conditions; he also wanted to gauge how long it would take for us to drive to the trailhead at Takakkaw Falls, in traffic, to give him a better idea of what time we should leave in the morning.

To get to Yoho National Park, we took Highway 1-A from Johnston Canyon, all the way to the village of Lake Louise - this was to avoid the construction traffic along the Trans-Canadian Highway, following yesterday's hang-ups.  Once in Lake Louise, we merged onto Highway 1, which headed west towards British Columbia.  It wasn't long after that, that we crossed into BC - and Yoho National Park - for the first time on our trip. 

And soon after that, we came to a dead stop along the highway.  Apparently, there had been a rockslide on Highway 1, so there was only one lane open.  As a result, construction workers had to control the flow of traffic by allowing only one lane through at a time.  By the time we were able to pass, most of the rocks had been cleared away; and workers were up on the cliff face, above the highway, trying to do what they could to prevent another rockslide.

After losing all that time to the traffic tie-ups, we decided to skip the hike that we had planned for the afternoon - the hike to Sherbrooke Lake.  Instead, John thought it would be a better idea to see if we could make it to Glacier National Park - not the one in Montana, but the smaller one, in British Columbia.  He had read that Glacier National Park is very scenic - one of the most scenic parks in the Canadian Rockies - and we hoped to have time to see it.

Driving through Yoho National Park was very interesting - scenic, of course, but interesting.  One of the things that we noticed right away was that the mountains were a bit different in Yoho.  In Banff, the mountains were very green below the treeline; in Yoho, they were brown and red.  To me, it looked as though a huge fire had wiped out all of the trees in the forest, much like the charred landscape between Overgaard and Heber, where the Rodeo-Chedeski fire burned 500,000 acres.  John disagreed; he believed that they were diseased.  Whatever the cause, the damage was widespread, covering thousands of acres.  We later learned that John was right; the trees had been attached by the Pine Mountain Beetle, similar to the bark beetle that had killed off a number of trees in the Bradshaw Mountains and on the Mogollon Rim.

We stopped at the Visitor's Center in the town of Field, located about halfway through Yoho National Park.  There, John stopped at the front desk to inquire about trail conditions for our backpacking trip; specifically, he had heard that the bridge at Twin Falls had been washed out and, as of June, had not been replaced.  If that was still the case, that was going to seriously alter our trip, because there was no way that Mary was going to be able to ford that river.  Although the worker at the desk didn't know anything off the top of her head, she was able to let us look through a binder of trail conditions; and according to the latest information, the bridge at Twin Falls was back in commission.  That meant that our trip would go on as planned.

While we were at the Visitor's Center, we browsed through the gift shop for souvenirs; we found a nice selection of T-shirts, some of which bore the slogan "Friends in High Places", which was the catch-phrase for the Canadian National Parks in the Rocky Mountains.  The one that John bought for himself was very clever; it was a spoof of an iPod ad, depicting silhouettes of animals - iDeer, iWolf, iMoose, and iBear - all sporting pairs of earbuds. 

Once we left the Visitor's Center with our new T-shirts, we got back into the car and drove a few miles up the road, to Natural Arch Falls.  As the name suggests, Natural Arch is a rock formation through which the Kicking Horse River flows.  Hundreds of years ago, the river flowed over the top of the rocks; over time, though, the force of the water blasted through the stone and formed a sort of natural bridge over the river. 

That afternoon, there were several people out on the rocks, boulder-hopping in the Kicking Horse River; John decided to join them.  He climbed out onto the Natural Arch, where he was able to get some nice pictures of the gushing water.  Minutes later, though, a tour bus showed up, and we decided that that was our cue to leave.

Since we were already on Emerald Lake Road, we decided to drive all the way to the end, to see Emerald Lake - a beautiful glacial-teal lake on the Emerald River.  When we arrived, we were lucky to find a parking spot in the vast parking lot; apparently, the lake is a very popular tourist spot.  Not only is there a lodge there - complete with a restaurant and a bar - but there are canoe and kayak rentals and hiking trails.  And - oh yes - the lake is very gorgeous!

But despite all of that beauty in front of us, what was it that caught Mary's attention?  It was a plant in a boot, of course, à la Wall-E!  "Look, Mom!" Mary called out wildly.  And then, in her best Wall-E voice, she added, "Directive!"

Thank you, Disney-Pixar!  (Okay, I will admit, I thought the same thing, too, when I saw the flowers in the boot.  I'm sure that those plants have been there long before that loveable robot ever appeared on the big screen; but we just couldn't help but make that connection.)

We didn't linger too long at Emerald Lake - after all, we still wanted to make Glacier Park that day - so after a few minutes, we headed back to the car and drove away.  This time, John had me drive, and that gave him the opportunity to play with the camera.  He started taking pictures out the sunroof of the car, and suddenly, he had an idea.  He took Mary's new Webkinz - Rocky - and held it outside of the sunroof, then photographed it.  The pictures were classic and were an excellent exercise in photography.

We returned to the Trans-Canadian Highway and continued our westward drive through Yoho National Park.  Along the way, we encountered more road construction, which slowed us down considerably - so much so that we were beginning to doubt that we could make it to Glacier Park that day.  John now hoped that we could at least make it to Golden, BC, so that we could stop and make a decision about our destination.  Then, we saw a sign showing the distance to Golden and Glacier Park.  Golden was still an hour away; Glacier Park was about three hours away.  We knew at that point that we weren't going to make it, so with that, we turned around and started heading east again.

On our way towards Banff, we made a side-trip on Yoho Valley Road, to see Takakkaw Falls and the trailhead for our backpacking trip.  There were other points of interest to see along Yoho Valley Road as well, such as the Spiral Tunnels, built by the Canadian-Pacific Railroad.  These tunnels were constructed in such a way that the trains made a full two hundred seventy degree turn, thus reducing the steep grade of the tracks. 

Another point of interest on Yoho Valley Road was part of the road itself.  About halfway to Takakkaw Falls, the road switchbacks - steeply - uphill.  To take these switchbacks in the car was easy enough; however, the switchbacks were cut at such an angle that any vehicle over nineteen feet in length would have difficulty with them.  That didn't mean that they couldn't get there, though.  In order to maneuver up the switchbacks, RV's and tour buses would have to take the first switchback in reverse, all the way to the edge of the road, until they had to clearance to drive forward up the second switchback.  We actually had the opportunity to watch a tour bus perform this feat; it was very interesting.

At the end of the road, we arrived at Takakkaw Falls, one of the highest waterfalls in Canada.  Takakkaw is a Cree word for "magnificent", and indeed Takakkaw Falls were magnificent!  Tumbling down a cliff face hundreds of feet high, the falls roared through the Yoho River Valley, spraying a fine, cool mist that could be felt a hundred feet away.  As hot as it was that day, it was quite refreshing.  I could see that there were several people standing right next to the falls, at the end of the trail; I'm sure that they were enjoying it!

We did not, however, hike to the end of the trail, to Takakkaw Falls; we only walked halfway down the trail, to a point where John could access the Yoho River.  From there, he was able to get a very good view of the falls so that he could photograph them.  Then, we turned around and walked back to the car.

And so ended our day at Yoho National Park.  Once we were back on the Trans-Canadian Highway, we started heading east again, towards Banff.  It was getting close to dinnertime, and we still had lots of stuff to do to prepare for the next day's backpacking trip.

On the way back to Johnston Canyon, we stopped in Lake Louise to buy fuel for our backcountry stove, fuel for our car, and fuel for our bellies.  We ate dinner at a restaurant that was attached to one of the many hostels in the area - this was mainly due to the fact that we weren't dressed to eat anyplace else.  This place was much more casual and catered to hikers and backpackers; it was highly recommended by one of our tour books.  Dinner was delicious, the beers were cold and refreshing, and the tab wasn't that expensive.

After dinner - and after getting gas for the car - we started driving back towards Johnston Canyon, on Highway 1A.  Along the way - near the Castle Mountain Campground, we found several cars off the side of the road - the first of many "animal jams" that we would encounter during our Canadian vacation.  We discovered that there was a large black bear foraging in the bushes, about a hundred feet off of the road.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there, he was already too far out of sight, and we were only able to get one picture of his butt before he disappeared from view.

When we arrived at Johnston Canyon, John immediately went down to the office to check out, since we weren't going to be able to do so in the morning.  The office was only open from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.; we were hoping to be gone long before then.  That wasn't a problem, though; they just asked that we settle up the night before then drop the key in the box on the way out in the morning. 

While checking out of our cabin, John discovered that his Chase credit card was missing!  He wasn't sure where he had left it, but he was certain that it was either at the restaurant or at the gas station.  He ended up paying for the cabin on another credit card, just to get it done; then, he drove back to Lake Louise alone to see if he could find the Chase card.  He returned an hour later, happy to announce that he had found his Chase card exactly where he had left it: at the gas station!

Once he was back at the cabin, we finished packing our backpacks - as well as our suitcases - so that we would be ready to go first thing in the morning.  Then, it was off to bed for a good night's sleep...

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