Day 4: Travel Day back to Canada

Radium Hot Springs

lunch at St. Eugenes

Arrival at Lake Louise and the Chateau Lake Louise

A vveeerrrry long travel day ( and hence a short blog post) leaving Lake McDonald Lodge in Glacier in Montana at 8:30 after a 1 night stay.

We headed once again to the Canadian border and onto the first of our Canadian beautiful parks. We traveled on the British Columbia side of the Canadian Rockies.

We made several stops, saw relatively few live animals ( plus a bunch of dead ones, so far, more prolific than the live ones) and found out some wonderful, fun and funny info about Canada.

First main stop (besides a bathroom and coffee break at a local supermarket) was for lunch at the St. Eugenes Golf Resort.

With beautiful flower beds out front, and a decent lunch inside, we were not aware of its previous life until we walked out and saw pictures of Indigenous kids along the wall.

This was one of the infamous schools that took Indigenous children away from their families to “ get the Indian out of them”. Portrayed rather negatively in many TV shows and movies (1923, Anne of Green Gables), they became an embarrassment to the Canadians. Many schools were razed, this one was turned into a resort with a golf course with all the proceeds going to the Indigenous nations.

Tanya kept us entertained with her version of Canadian history, covering every Territory and Provence Provence across Canada pointing out the highs ( and lows) of each area. Could have been an SNL skit!

Next stop was the town of Radium Hot Springs and a cute Information Center. Besides the above mentioned dead animals, it had some nice bronze artwork of mountain goats as well as two modern animal horn statues in the rotary in the middle town. (Try playing those as a shofar!)





A bit outside this area, as we traveled through Kootenay National park, we saw hoodoos and a range called “ the castle”.

Finally, around 5:15 we rolled into our gorgeous hotel, the Chateau Lake Louise, a humongous hotel sitting next to the spectacular Lake Louise. We were blown away when we got into our room to see this view right outside our window.

And inside our room was a huge bottle of Prosecco, some cake and candies, still milking Jim’s birthday. So thoughtful and quite unbelievable!

Dinner, which we had to sign up for two days ago was at the Lakeside Lounge restaurant, a bit more low key than the main one, but with fantastic views of the lake. Wendy, who had a really bad cold at this point went upstairs early to try to feel better and get some sleep.