This is going to be VERY LONG! part one...

I have this all written out in a journal so I wouldn't forget it :P

06/21/10
The place we are staying at is just out side of Kootenay National Park called Nipika Mountain Resort. It is absolutely beautiful here. We stopped in at the town called Radium, B.C. before we went to the lodge so that we could have dinner and pick up a few groceries. Raduim has natural hot springs which I am totally going to visit those and relax in them. Now I can official say that I have been to B.C. :) We went to a place called the Melting Pot for dinner. It was really quite quaint. Not a lot of people in there, especially for Father's Day. I don't have to pay for any of my meals because they are all included in my trip costs. hahhahahah I can eat all I want. On the way back to Nipika we have to pass through these thinks called the Iron Gates. Two extremely tall cliff faces with a small road that had be blasted between them. Talk about impressive. Made me feel really quite tiny. We also passed by a pictograph site which Brad has been doing some work on. Two of the pictographs dating to the turn of the century. They were first photographed in 1914. They were drawn by the Ktunaza, an Eastern Columbia Plateau group with plains cultural influences. On the way back to the lodge we saw a black bear on the side of the highway just munching away on food. It was really cute! I was told it was a mid-sized black bear so I took a couple of pictures. It was my first time seeing a black bear. It was really exciting for me. We also saw a deer, a buck actually. It was still growing its antlers for this season. My first time seeing a live buck. Ahha. :) There is a lot of wildlife on Settler's Road, which is the dirt logging road we take to get to Nipika. It's almost guaranteed that we will see some wildlife on the road each time we drive it. The lodge is really quite wonderful and beautiful and I'm going to take a million pictures of it. The lodge we were staying in is called Kootenay Cabin. It's spectacular. I get to sleep in the loft which is okay, Brad and Dave each get one of the rooms. The bed is super comfy and warm which is perfect for me and I can't wait to sleep in it. The front of the lodge faces the mountains so every morning I'll get to wake up and see them first thing. The resort is just a few clicks outside of the park boundary so you can see where a little bit of the logging has been done. Anyway, off to sleep for the first night...

06/22/10
Today was my first trip into bush and forests of Kootenay National Park. There were just the three of us out there, Brad, Dave and I. This was my first real outback experience and it was EPIC! We headed into the East part of the park and had to cross the Kootenay River. Let me tell you, aside from us and the park wardens, there is no human habitation or interference on that side of the river at all. Probably cause no one wants to cross the river. It was really swollen from all of the mountain top run off and had an extremely strong current to try and cross. We put the canoe in the water at the gravel pit about 1.8km by the water flow and approx 1.5km walking distance from the site we were going to. For the most part the trek is along the waters edge but with the river being so high we have the hike through brush and downed trees. We had to carry our packs with screens and shovels all through the wilderness. That was fun. -.- It takes about an hour and a half to walk to the site. The site is called 494T and is located on the north side of the oxbow pond south of the Suede(or Swede...i can't read my writing there...) creek. There was a hearth feature that was found last year that we were reopening to see if there was any more information to be gathered from it. We saw lots of deer while walking through as well as some pretty fresh bones probably from a cougar or bear kill. Luckily we didn't see any Grizzly bears, apparently you don't want to have a run in with on of them. The site was in cougar territory as brad and his crew from last year had a very close run in with one. We did see the cougar's scratching post...a tree with the bark shredded. Talk about a big kitty... O.o I took a picture so I could show Mom. hahahahaha. I also saw elk antlers that were shed from last winter. I now can tell the difference between Elk and Deer solely based upon their antlers :P Oh yeah, I'm cool. There were little bite marks all over the antlers because the mice in the forest go and chew on it to get the calcium they need. Brad was saying that my legs would probably be tired from all the hiking around, but I think it will be more of my shoulder's than anything from carrying the pack and screen. At the end of the day we hiked back to the canoe and paddled our little hearts out to get back the other side of the river. We went back into Radium for dinner this time to a German restaurant called....I don't remember....lol But I had a delicious steak dinner. On the drive back to Nipika we saw female elk on the side of the road eating something or other...holy wow....much bigger than a deer. There is also a little black bear that is hanging around of Settler's road around 6-8clicks in. Back at the lodge we decided that we were going to fire up the wood burning hot tub and relax in it. It was really cool, I'd never seen anything quite like it. I wasn't able to stay in it for long because I had already had a headache and the super hot water was only making it worse and making it very difficult to breathe. You can't control the temperature in something like that because of the fact that it is wood stoked. I was pretty tired so I went to bed pretty early that night.

I shall continue part two tomorrow!.... :)