Radium to home

 This morning we started heading towards home thinking that we would probably make it to Calgary depending on how many things we would do, or go see.

After a fabulous night of sleep and an excellent breakfast purchased from a very busy cafe we were on the road around 9 A.M.

Our first stop was Numa Falls on highway 93 in Kootenay National Park. This is a cute little water falls right beside the highway. It had a nice picnic area too.

A little further up the road was our first hike at Painted Pot. We had anticipated doing a couple of kilometres there but the trail conditions were quite bad and we soon returned to our vehicle.

A few kilometres more was Marble Canyon. This canyon is like a smaller version of Maligne Canyon and was very beautiful to walk alongside (and up to the start of the falls). There were a few people enjoying the canyon with us

The drive north through Kootenay Park was fabulous. The colors of the trees were stunning and the mountains spectacular. I like that mountain scenery better than Banff National (at least the areas I am familiar with)

When we reentered Banff we took a chance and headed north to the Lake Louise area. I knew that it would be impossible to get parking at the lake however we weren't going to even try there but instead to go to Moraine Lake. As we were getting closer to the town we saw the "park and ride to the lake" parking lot jammed and shortly afterward an electronic sign saying both the Lake Louise AND Moraine Lake parking lots were full.I was surprised that Moraine Lake was full as it is a fair ways from Lake Louise and not as famous. Oh well.

We headed down the Bow Valley Parkway at a leisurely pace and stopped at a hiking location; the Castle Lookout hike. A long one at 3.7 km but we decided to give it a whirl. Turns out it is a hard core hike beyond our "old people" capabilities. We did about one km and were going hard up the mountain puffing away when we met some people who had just turned around. They had a sophisticated hiking app on their cell showing that we had only gone up 120 vertical metres with about 350 more to go in the remaining 2.7 km to the top. Back down we went!

We bypassed Johnston Canyon as it was a zoo with many people there

Caro wanted to see a quilt shop in Canmore so that is where we went next.

As we had completed everything we had wanted and didn't feel like hiking trails in Canmore we decided to head for home.

We arrived back about 7:30.