Day 18 - Lake Louise to Golden

Today marks the official day that we start to return home, even though the half way mark was last week. As of today we re-trace our steps to get back to Vancouver, and today we drove back to Golden, stopping off at Morants curve (as you do) to get the obligatory morning shots.

Morants Curve - located on the Bow Valley Parkway on the outskirts of Lake Louise. Named after the CP special photographer Nicholas Morant who took many famous winter shots here. The mid train helper is a specially painted unit produced to celebrate the 2010 Vancouver winter Olympics - the special markings have been removed, only the white band and 'Canadian Pacific' remains. A rare treat to see this. Take a moment to admire this scenery - it's the only one taken from today.

I got two trains, both coming from the east, so no head-ons, then we played the waiting game. Little did we know, until we got there, work crews were replacing sleepers near the spiral tunnels, therefore holding up trains. We've got really good at waiting for nothing to happen.

A place we didn't stay at Lake Louise - the proximity of this fast flowing river to the hotel is of slight concern. Nice view though - until your feet start getting wet.

We did a tiki tour onto Yoho Valley Rd for a few ks to where the upper spiral tunnel lookout is located, then continued onto Field for lunch - and a train starts up and departs, so we returned to the lookout to watch it enter and exit the tunnels. They're a long way away and up high so no point in attempting to video it.

Second attempt to return to Field for lunch - this time success !! Just as we finished, a Canpotex train departed eastward.

We continued onto Golden, stopping at a couple of locations to see what we could see and film a train here and there. I got an awesome shot from the Kicking Horse rest area. I didn't get a photo so try this link:

https://goo.gl/maps/uO7iG

The tracks are on the opposite side of the river.

After checking in  - seamless and a most pleasant experience - the other generation had a combat nap to ease their weary heads and I reviewed the footage from the last few days. There's some really good stuff.

A quick cheap dinner (no names) and we went out again with new found vigour - back to KC Junction on Andersons Road. We didn't have to wait long - a Canpotex train turned up and headed for Field, and as soon as that passed through, another Canpotex unit went the opposite way - the same one we saw at Morants Curve earlier that day. As soon as I stopped recording and started walking back to the guys, a light appeared - "Train On !" This time a stack train went hurtling through. I called it quits at 8:30 pm so we could have an early night. Sleep deprivation is taking its toll.

Tomorrow we're off to Salmon Arm.

EJ