Breakfast should not be this many colours. Honestly, who thought radioactive blue was an appetising colour? Let alone green, red and yellow. And I don’t care how many times you tell me they are “naturally flavoured” they still taste like someone else’s old chewing gum.
Fruity Cheerio’s is all I have for now since we didn’t go to a food shop yesterday. Aimi has the marginally better (but also toxic tasting) blueberry frosted mini wheats. One of the day’s missions needs to be new cereal. But at 6am we suck it down and roll out of the RV park. All indications say that the car parking is very limited so we need to get there early.
And as early as we did arrive, it was still 75% full. All the RV slots had been taken so I skillfully backed it into a normal space. Which, as an aside, is still ridiculously long for a “normal” space. Aimi wasn’t happy about it thinking we would get a ticket, but after I found a site attendant, they said it was fine.
Aimi wasn’t feeling great, having picked up the start of a cold, but she also didn’t want to spend the day in the van. We therefore set off up the walk we had planned, but not the full 17km round trip, and at a leisurely pace. This suited me and my knee just fine.
Up the switchback trail through the trees, we got glimpses of the view as we ascended. It was only after about an hour did we break out of the treeline and get a proper view across the valley to Takakkaw Falls. We saw it briefly from the carpark, but now we could see the full height. And the higher we climbed, the more we could see above the cliff fall up onto the glacier above.
Now having done most of the ascent we trended along above the treeline towards the lookout point. This was our mini goal for the day. The summit looked over the same view we had all day, just a little higher up and still not the proper summit of the peaks towering over us.
As we got close to the view point a glacier revealed itself above us and streams of water cascaded down the rocks across our path. It was amazing and beautiful. Especially the patterns in the bedrock we were walking across where the glacier had carved grooves. There were also patterns in the rock that looked like feathers or branches. I’m not so sure how these were formed but maybe pebbles rolling in little pockets as the ice passed overhead?
We settled at the viewpoint for some lunch. It’s a mound of tough earth, lighter in colour than the surrounding landscape. There is only a thin track out to its peak making it look like you are standing on top of the world. As beautiful a place as this was for lunch, it did mean I had to play photographer for several groups. I didn’t mind, I like getting good photos and most people are just rubbish at taking pictures.
After a slow walk down thanks to Aimi’s cold and my knee we finally reached the carpark. It had been a relatively long hike but we had one more stop before we head off. To get up close to the falls. Omg there were so many people. We didn’t know how they all got here because the carpark is tiny, until we saw a huge coach in the bus parking.
This blew our minds a little because on the way up, there is a switch back road with really tight hairpin bends. There is no way a coach could do it. I barely made it. Only with a bit of optimistic reversing did i make it round.
We found out how on the way down. Meeting a queue of traffic at the hairpins one RV did my 3 point turn technique and barely made it round. I’m glad i was in the RV when i did it because watching how close to the edge i must have gotten would have been terrifying. But then the next RV in the queue approached the problem completely differently. He went straight at the corner and then reversed down the next section of road slowly to the next hairpin where he could drive off straight again! This was (sketchy) genius so I had to give it a go.
And slow it was, but it worked! This is not something i want to do everyday, but i was quite impressed with myself backing this huge vehicle down a mountain pass without crashing, scuffing or dinging my or anyone else’s vehicles. Unfortunately no videos or photos of this, i had all my concentration trained on driving and Aimi’s too.
Picking up some food in Golden a while later we turned off the main road and onto a packed earth track. This led is down into the forest towards our stop for the night. It was rattly going but eventually we made it, checked in and parked up. That was when the train went by and blasted it’s horn.
Aimi was not impressed. I have to admit, this is going to make it hard to sleep if they go all thru the night. Train horns are so loud, but it’s only one night so we will just have to deal with it. On the plus side, the campervan shower is amazing.
