Thurs 18th Aug - Rocky to Golden

Mollie doing Cat Feeding Duties

We were up quite early and after toast with the much feted blackcurrant jam we had to bid farewell to Mollie. Which is always sad even though in between times she has irritated or frustrated us. Actually this time once she had sorted her medication out just after we arrived her mood improved markedly. She said she might try to come to England, and is part way toward completing her passport application, but who knows whether she will.




Each time we come here she is a little older and a little more frail and we wonder if it will be the last time and hope it won't. She's now 89 and pretty much blind and deaf but is going to hang on in there until our next visit.

Eating all Hamish's Snackettes

We popped in to see Hamish too, and to check whether or not he is behaving in Pat's absence. He seemed to be, although his tooth did just drop right out while we were there. He gave us coffee and some of Joan's amazing wedding cake and a butter tart AND a melting moment from the stash that Pat has made to keep him going. There were even some cookies to take with us. She is very kind and a super good cook.

Me about to be Eternally Youthful

We headed up out of Rocky then along the no.11 towards the Saskatchewan Crossing and then up to the Columbia Icefields. We went right up onto the glacier in a huge truck with giant wheels and had a good look and walk around and drank some of the glacier water (it gives eternal youth (!)). It was veeery cold up there particularly after scooping up a handful or two of eternal youth but we were revived by a hot dog and hot chocolate.

Nice View (nicer in real life!)

We saw some amazing scenery today, on the way up to the mountains & while we were driving through. We stopped at the lovely turqoise Abraham Lake and chatted up some bikers from Oregon. And once we were in the mountains there were beautiful scenes at every turn, but we didn't always manage to do them justice in our photos.






On the way we pulled in at the Spiral Tunnels where the CPR built two looped tunnels into the hillside to reduce the alarmingly steep gradient the trains had to come down which had caused lots of accidents. While we were there one of the epic Canadian trains came along in front of us. It turned back on itself round the next part of the hill, went into the loop and came out again, and there were still trucks passing by in front if us on the first part of the hill, and we'd been watching at least 15 minutes. Last time we were here mum counted well over 100 trucks on a train. (Nothing here is small).

The view from the balcony

In spite of some more roadworks we found our b&b first time and it is really lovely. There is a big bearskin on the wall downstairs and a plate of homemade cookies and all is cosy and nesty (see tomorrow for a pic). The view from out room with the mountains in the distance is lovely.

We went out for dinner in Golden at "eleven 22"and had a delicious meal of butter chicken (mum) and duck breast with a squash and goat's cheese tart, kale and a maple glaze (me). Mine won. We had a glass of wine with two of the other guests back at the b&b, and killed many mosquitoes. There seems to be a bit of a plague here.

Andy & Nancy's Wedding Photo

Ah Andy I forgot to put a pic of your wedding photo before. Lynn told us the frame was damaged in the post and they replaced it -don't know if that's just the glass or all of it but you can probably tell from the photo. Thought you'd like to see it was up! x