June 18 Golden, BC

Started the day with a 3 hour horse back ride on Kicking Horse Mountain.  It was just me and the guide.  It was a fantastic ride up and down hills and across streams.

 
I look like I weight about 350 pounds in this picture.  It was so cold that morning that I had on a t-shirt, sweat shirt, a vest, and my jacket!  By the end of the ride it was so warm I had to take them all off!

Although they were offering horse back rides, we are early for the summer season; things don’t start kicking around here until after the next weekend. That’s a little disappointing because we wanted to ride the Gondola up to the top of the mountain where there is a restaurant and the views are suppose to be fantastic!

So, we walked through a little of the historical section and then had a late lunch out on the patio overlooking the Kicking Horse River. The most outstanding thing we saw in Golden was the pedestrian bridge over the Kicking Horse River. During the bleak days of 9/11 the entire community of Golden, along with other volunteers joined forces and built this bridge, completely of wood. The bridge is the longest free standing timber framed bridge in Canada, spanning 151’. The bridge weighs about 210,000 pounds and was constructed of 72,000 board feet of Douglas-Fir timbers.

The bridge connects the Rotary walking/biking trails that surround the town, and at one end of the bridge is a lovely pavilion bursting with the color of spring flowers, which is also carried out into the town where there are baskets full of flowers and beautiful gardens all over town.