We made the most of our last morning in the Swarovski Crystal bejeweled Sparkling Hill Resort and then headed out to Kicking Horse Resort in Golden. We passed through the city of Vernon on highway 97. You’ll notice all the way up the valley that businesses refer include 97 all through the Okanagan.

We detoured to Salmon Arm for gas and a little road food. Salmon Arm is on Shuswap Lake, known for it’s houseboats and worth checking out.

We rejoined the original route at Sicamous. We stopped at the Last Spike. It was very busy here. I always loved the area around Three Valley Gap, but we chose to drive through to Revelstoke.

We did the tourist thing and strolled around Revelstoke for a while and then went over to Revy Mountain to check it out. There were mountain bikers everywhere. The mountain looked great.

We carried on and stopped Rogers Pass. We were the only ones there. We spent some time looking around ad checking out the marmots.

We also stopped in Glacier National Park. Sadly we couldn’t see glaciers from the highway – global warming. I’m comparing this to many years ago when you could.

We managed to stretch a 4 hour trip into over 6 hours, which is exactly how road trips should go.

Once we reached Kicking Horse Resort, it was after hours and the Grizzly Bear Reserve lift was closed.

However, we did see a black bear on our way back down to Golden for dinner.

We ate at the Island Restaurant in Golden, which seemed to be “the popular” place for those who knew. It got quite busy and they began to run out of tables. It was Tex Mex night and the food was great!

Back at Kicking Horse Lodge, we discovered the town was on evacuation alert. We also learned that using the hot tub was fruitless because of the mosquitos. The resort is super quiet in the summer, but I imagine it looks quite different in the winter. Hoping to return one ski season to confirm this.