12th July 2016 - Lake Louise, AB - Kms to date 4,027

Kms today 336

We left Salmon Arm in beautiful sunshine but were warned by Bert that nasty rain would appear as soon as we got out of the valley. Salmon Arm and Kamloops enjoy a warm dry climate because they are in a long valley that avoids the nasty weather extremes of the rest of the Rockies. As we headed up the valley the weather deteriorated and by Revelstone the rain was fairly steady. Not pleasant riding but at least our wet weather gear was working and we were dry. The temperature got down to 10C so I had my grip warmers on flat stick. Colin doesn't have any grip warmers on his bike so he just froze. We got to Golden at lunchtime and had lunch at Tim Hortons. The manager was going around asking everybody if everything was OK so Colin said no as they had made his Latte with powdered milk. Serves him right for being one of that limp-wristed brigade. They had run out of milk so were substituting all kinds of rubbish for it. My Americano (long black) was passable. We made Lake Louise in the early afternoon and luckily our room was ready for us. We gambled the weather would be worse in the morning so we headed for the lake whilst it was only drizzling. The car park was full but we found a couple of spaces where a car couldn't park. The place was chockers as you can see from the photo below.

Colin enjoying the sights at Lake Louise .... in the rain.

I was here in 1984 when the weather was nice and sunny and there were no tourists. The lake and glacier are pretty spectacular even in the rain. After we had dinner in the village the weather brightened quite considerably and the sun even came out so Colin went back to the lake to take some more photos in much better weather.

Lake Louise and Glacier.

Alan about to tell Colin he's wiped the camera SD card for the 2nd time!

Unfortunately at this stage we cannot download any more photos from Colin's camera to this blog at the moment as  my hub keeps devouring Colin's SD card. We might have to use phone photos for the blog as we'll have none from his camera.