Snow in mountains above Summit Lake!

It rained all night last night and we woke to rain, not heavy, but just an on going drizzle. We had not walked out to the hot springs last night, so we started the day with a walk out to the springs. I have never been a fan of hot springs, so we didn't take any swimming clothes. Even in the rain, these looked so inviting! The springs were beautiful and clean looking. They even have dressing rooms, and handrails into the pools. So sorry we didn't come prepared to use them.

The weather seemed to get worse as the day progressed. I finally had Tom stop so I could take a picture of the snow dusting that was falling on the mountain tops just above us!

Stopped to take a little hike to an overlook of the Trout river, great view, and a little wet. (Auggie always appreciates these stops, any chance to walk and SNIFF!) For lunch we got to the Northern Rockies Lodge at Muncho Lake. Beautiful log lodge, more recently built then most of the lodges we see. Muncho is normally known for being a deep green jade color lake due to the minerals, but without much sun it was hard to really see that color. Regardless, the drive is really nice, cut right into the mountain, right along the edge of the lake.

After lunch we took another short hike up to some Canadian "hoodoos", or as the trail is called Erosian Pillars. Would have included a picture of them but my cell phone battery died on the way up the trail. Arrrgh! (You have to plan ahead when dry camping and make sure you are charging your phone with the truck engine via cigarette lighter) Fun trail, but it is all uphill to the pillars and all downhill to the highway. Pretty cold, we actually dug out our gloves for this walk.

The drive today has been great, really just meandering through what is known as the northern Rockies. They look pretty remote, very "rocky", above tree line, especially on this cloudy, sort of misty day. I had wished it might have been clearer to see more of the peaks, however the dusting of snow made what we saw look beautiful.

We got to the summit about 4 and decided to camp in the provincial campground so we could see if tomorrow would bring a little more sun for the drive. The campground was awesome, it reminded me of Tenaya (or is it Tioga?) up at the top of the pass over hwy 41 in Yosemite. Just this little jewel of an alpine lake, up in the mountains with a handful of campsites at lakes edge. ( I LOVE the Canadian parks, well located,clean, maintained, inexpensive, and almost always with a site available!)

As soon as we got settled the park operator stopped by to let all the campers know that there was an incident with a mama grizzley and two cubs. There had been some warning shots fired when they got to close to the operators site and as a result the cubs swam across the lake and mama went another direction. So we needed to know all three were in the area, and probably upset to some degree. SO glad Cindy was home, she would have not slept well at all!
Kept us glued to the RV window looking for bear, but never got a glimpse, and never heard anymore about the bears...still this site was the best! What a blessing!Read more