Lake Louise Village Area

TRAINS!!!  I have always loved trains, I guess because I was brought up in a train town where a large portion of the population either worked on the railroad or in the shops that repaired them.  After last night, my love affair has seriously weakened.  From the time I went to bed until I got up around seven o'clock, seven trains went by the campground.  Each one blew their horns four times, the fourth right beside our campsite.  Ted slept through them all.  We will be here ten nights. Lets hope I get used to it.

After we got ourselves organized, we rode our bicycles out of the "hard-sided park" and across the river to the park that allows tents and pop-ups.  That campground has an electric fence all around it with an electrified cattle guard (they call it a Texas Guard) to allow vehicles to pass.  Pedestrians are supposed to use the electrified gate.  We went in one gate and out another to ride the Bow River Trail.  We rode along the beautiful, fast flowing, aqua river past town to where we crossed a bridge and returned to the village on the other side.

Our Campsite

Bow River

Cattle Guard Going to Tenting Campground

Electric Fence to Keep Bears Out

What we saw of the village consisted of a small shopping mall and the visitors center.  We window shopped fro awhile and it started to rain.  We waited under the eaves of the buildings and then hurried over to the visitors center where we learned all kinds of great facts that we will soon forget.  I do remember that Lake Louise is named for the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria who was married to the first head of the government of Alberta.  Also, Lake Louise is the highest community in Canada at 5,018 feet above sea level.

Shopping Mall

Everything was Beautiful

Walkway to Visitors Center

The visitors center had great displays of the early years of the park, several stuffed animals (real, not toys) and a large section on the geology of the area.  We watched the twenty-three minute film, got a map of the area and got on our bikes to return for a late lunch and do another load of laundry.  

Mountain Goat

Grizzly Bear

Beautiful Bridge Outside Visitors Center

I made a big beef stew for dinner while Ted worked on getting something to put under our front tires which are off the ground.  We watched a movie until the power went off.  Ted checked the other sites around us and went down to report the outage.  The whole town was out of power and the rangers were working on generators to get the electric fence working to protect the campers in tents.  That was okay by us.  We listened to an audio book all evening using the chassis batteries.