We spent the night near Corum MT at Glacier Under the Stars. It's tent camping but with a real bed and wood stove in the tent plus bathrooms with hot showers and flush toilets. They call it "glamping". I call it the only way to camp with kids. It was quite nice to sleep in a king size bed while camping. Here is a link to their website.
We crossed over into Canada the next day....very long day of driving with two littles, but we managed. Our destination was Fairmont Hot Springs where we spent 5 nights.
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| view from our condo |
The main attraction in Fairmont Hot Springs is...you guessed it, the hot springs. We went swimming twice a day on the 3 full days that we were there. The "cooler" pool is 89 degrees and the hot pool is 102. The kids LOVED every minute of it.
The view of the valley from the Hot Springs was beautiful
On one of the days we took a day trip and went to Banff and Lake Louise. I had always wanted to go to Banff and it was only 100 miles away, so we made a day of it. Here is the map of our day trip.
Our first stop was Tim Horton's for Timbits (donut holes). I'm not a donut fan, but for some reason I love these. The girls loved them too, especially the cute little box they come in. We ended up getting Timbits 3 times during our week in Canada.
We traveled through Kootenay National Park and Banff National Park to get to Banff and Lake Louise. The only problem was that it was a very rainy and cloudy day so we only had little peek-a-boo views of the mountains and didn't get any good pictures. I'm sure on a clear day it is more than spectacular. I will have to go back.
When we got to Banff it was rainy and 39 degrees so we bundled up the kids in all the warm stuff that we had brought.
We had lunch in town and walked around the main street.
Lake Louise is just up the road from Banff so we headed that way in the late afternoon. James and I ended up having to trade off walking out to the lake and driving the sleeping kids around the parking lot.
It was well worth the look. It was a gorgeous lake filled with light aqua/turquoise water. Amazingly beautiful. I only wish we could have stayed a little longer.
On the way back we also stopped to take a few pictures of the river with the same beautifully colored glacier water.
Back at Fairmont Hot Springs we had another day of swimming.
Then after another long day of driving and we arrived at Lake Okanogan Resort (near Kelowna) for our last couple of nights/days before heading home.
We swam in the lake and played in the sand
had a picnic lunch
then back to the lake after nap and dinner. Elin and I swam out to a trampoline that was just off shore. The lake was COLD...so then we ended up in the hot tub.
We had one last long day of driving and we were finally home. We drove 2015 miles in two weeks. .....with two little kids...... seriously, what were we thinking? But, we all made it with only a few hiccups, and we had fun.
Here is the map of our route.
Although it looks like we were super busy (which we were) a big portion of our week was spent relaxing at the hot springs. We had a very nice family week and our kids are now big fans of Canada (Ani calls is Can-da-da). I can see why they call BC Beautiful British Columbia. We drove through some of the most beautiful places I have been with amazingly big mountains.
Maija
