Yoho National Park visit
I wasn’t quite ready to leave Jasper but the weather wasn’t going to improve enough for spending much more time there. We headed back towards Lake Louise and HWY 1 making our way west. Yoho National Park is on Banff’s western border and is filled with trails, falls, railroad engineering displays. Both the Yoho and Kicking Horse rivers provide summer activities. Our first stop gave us an interesting read about the spiral tunnels and the late 1800s Canadian Pacific Railroad development.
The spiral tunnels allow trains to do a loop through a mountain at a more manageable and successful grade. There are two loops in the kicking horse pass area. Much more detail is on the park website here: https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/bc/yoho/culture/kickinghorse/visit/spirale-spiral.
Our 2nd stop was driving up to Takakkaw Falls, one of the tallest falls in the Canadian Rockies. There’s an easy walking path from the parking area to the bottom of these thundering falls. The falls, fed by Daly glacier which is fed by the Waptuk icefield, are 254m high!
Yoho River at Trail bridge 
Yoho River at base of falls 
The magnificent falls in September were huge; there were rocky platforms the water exploded off of before continuing its vertical descent. I can’t imagine what they’d sound and look like early in the summer. Yoho National Park has an intriguing set of backpack trails covering these falls and others. Something to consider for our return trip.
Glacier National Park
After our Waitabit creek campsite stay (https://workingonexploring.wordpress.com/2019/09/11/boondocking-in-bc-canada/) we continued west through the next park off HWY 1. Due to both heavy clouds and major road construction we didn’t get to spend any time at a specific site or trail. From the road, the Illecillewaet Glacier made an appearance through the clouds.
Predominantly a mountaineering Park, Glacier also has interesting Railroad history and a ancient hemlock grove.
Revelstoke Railroad Musuem
We enjoy finding mid day breaks that aren’t always rest stops or highway pullouts! Since we had some time, we visited the Revelstoke Railroad Musuem for an interesting dose of Canadian Railroad history.
The 1948 locomotive on display ran passengers and freight to Kamloops or made runs to Glacier. She was retired in 1954 and is only 1 of 3 of her class.
Where to next
Plans are to make our way south back to the USA and proceed west via the North Cascades Highway.
We stayed with a boondockers welcome host one evening and discovered a very small vineyard down the road. Made for a nice evening diversion to talk to the wine make and enjoy a tasting.
Making random pit stops is part of the challenge during drive days. Always want to have a slide of time to venture off the beaten path and see a little more of the area we’re driving through. An ad hoc stop before we leave beautiful Canada is lunch at a winery. If you drive through Okanagan valley area you must partake! My random pick (timed to feeding the driver) put us at the south end of the valley. Wild Goose Vineyards and Winery. They serve lunch with a menu of slow smoked meat dishes…yumm. They’re known for the white varietals and all I tasted we’re outstanding.
Working on Exploring 