Our next stop was Radium Hotsprings and Kootenay National Park. Like Glacier National Park, the last time I'd visited was when I was a little kid, and Leo had never seen the park.
We stayed at Dry Gulch Provincial Park just South of Radium. We really liked this campsite in open forest in the wide Columbia River Valley after the dark and rainy Glacier Park. It's a small (20 sites) roadside campsite close to town and the park.
We only had a day in Radium so we did a driving tour of the park, stopping at trailheads and taking short hikes.
The first stop was at Olive Lake where we walked the boardwalk
and spotted this unusual sopallallie bush with orange berries.
We followed the Kootenay River
to McLeod Meadows where we followed a trail to the bridge crossing the river.
Our next stop was the Paint Pots. You follow Ochre Creek up to
the ochre beds where First Nations and later settlers mined the ochre.
It was quite a muddy business.
There were artifacts left from the mining business.
You never know what you might find in a paint pot!
Marble Canyon was closed for reconstruction. You can still hike there from the paint pots, but we didn't have time.
Quite a lot of the park has been burnt by wildfire.
We stopped at Flow Creek and walked down to the bridge over a beautiful little canyon.
We hope to come back another year and hike some of these trails.
Back at Radium we hiked up a short trail to the site of the former Radium Lodge, now demolished, for a view over the hot springs resort.
It's a modern facility but it's nestled nicely up against the cliffs and has a nice view of the surrounding mountains.
We planned to visit the hotsprings in the evening but decided instead to hang around our campsite.
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