Way back to Sicamous

7/10/11
Indeed, the instant noodles this morning was delicious, though it tasted quite odd. Soon I was sent to get ice for the cooler. The guest directory said that there was one ice machine every floor, but there isn’t on the third floor, the one on the fourth floor is out of order, so the only one in the hotel is on the fifth floor. So much for “one on every floor”.

We soon checked out of the hotel and drove to Canmore, where we shopped at the Safeway there. They sold sushi and Chinese hot food, so we bought some pork spring rolls, fried chicken wings, fried ribs (they tasted like bones covered with flour and then fried), and many kinds of sweet-and-sour meat. The spring rolls tasted fabulous; there were a lot of bean sprouts in it. It was cheaper and tastier than Silver Dragon, the restaurant we went to in Banff, and Canmore is only 21 kilometers away. Mom and Dad both thought that we should have driven here instead of going to that expensive Chinese restaurant. We also bought some cherries and a bag of peaches (of which two were extremely sour and hard and taste like apples).

We kept driving on because we have about 360 kilometers to cover. However, we stopped at Field, where we used their restroom. We also went to Rogers Pass National Historic Site, where I stayed in the car after emptying our bladders while the others hung out in the visitor center and Judy got a bookmark. After a short drive we arrived at Rogers Pass Summit, where I rang a bell several times and took many pictures. Then we drove on until we arrived at Hemlock Grove Trail, which is only 400 meters. Giant Cedars Nature Trail came next, which is also an easy trail. The only bad part was that we met a large group of people that spoke an unfamiliar language (probably French). They talked very, very loudly.

We stopped at Skunk Cabbage next. The sign said that it was in bear country, and Judy wanted to stay on the car, so Mom was very nervous. She kept rushing and walked really quickly, so I couldn’t really enjoy the trail. Suddenly, Mom yelped; she saw a lady in brown and mistook her for a bear. The lady kept calming Mom down, “I’m not a bear! I’m not a bear!”

Our next stop was Meadows in the Sky. It was really beautiful when we went there in 2006, but this year about half of the road was closed due to construction work because of a landslide. We drove up as far as we could go (about 13 kilometers) and then drove down to our next hotel, Best Western Sicamous. This hotel has an indoor pool (which none of us wanted to go to) and a lot of mosquitoes (which we all wanted to kill).

We ate the sweet-and-sour meat with instant noodles and sprinkled in some Taiwanese instant noodles seasoning. It was pretty delicious.