I have never seen more picturesque scenery in my life than what I saw today. We climbed up a canyon out of Golden and then entered Yoho National park– which later turned into Banff National Park. I forgot to mention that we crossed our first time zone yesterday–pretty exciting!

I had expected today to be a lot less climbing than yesterday over Roger’s Pass, and it was, but it was still quite a lot of climbing. We reached the top of the Trans-Canada Highway today after stopping in Field, a small town 50km outside of Golden, for lunch. After that, it was a bit of a climb to the Continental Divide and the Kicking Horse Pass, the top (1640m). We talked to a few people on our way up before the hill and they all warned us that it was looong and steep (6-7% grade). Ultimately, it wasn’t as bad as I had predicted. That’s not to say it was easy, because it definitely wasn’t, but it wasn’t as bad as everyone had made it out to be.

Happy Canada Day! We saw lots of Canadian flags on cars today- pretty exciting. Today is the national holiday commemorating the confederation of Canada. Feeling a little more Canadian having explored more and more of the country every day. We’re now watching Canadian Bacon, a great movie if you’re ever in search of a movie that pokes fun at Canadian stereotypes. Another very Canadian experience today was seeing a real Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, read coat, hat, boots and all.

Around 10km before Lake Louise we crossed the border into Alberta! Pretty exciting to be moving across the continent so quickly!

(sorry for the overload of pictures)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.