MMW Orlando Adventure: Day 12 to Revelstoke

Today was a sad day as we were leaving the Rockies. We repacked the cases and were headed out to the car at around 9.30. After a quick breakfast in Tim Hortons we were soon heading up Highway 1 back to Banff. I put on the audio tour from Banff to Kamloops and we listened along to the stories of the railway and the natural surrounding we were passing through.

We were surprised not to really leave the mountains. The lovely scenery continued with rivers and snow capped mountains as the road takes you through YoHo, Glacier National Park and on into Revelstoke National Park.

We paused at Golden as they have an adventure centre that includes a reasonably new alpine coaster attraction. Unfortunately the only way to ride (or even see the coaster) is by paying for an adventure ticket that includes their 2 suspension bridges. We didn't really want to spend a great deal of time here (it looks set up to keep you on site and busy with a ziplining course, giant swing and axe throwing among the other attractions. The weather was also a bit unpredictable with light rain showers so we decided to give it a miss, as there is another pipeline coaster we are planning later today.

The audio guide did make a couple of suggestions for short walk stops which we thought would suit us but unfortunately one was closed (looked like road repairs) and another had been cut short as the boardwalk was no longer safe! We drove on, and on reaching Revelstoke we decided to again follow the guides suggestion and do the 26km Meadows in the Sky Parkway. Unfortunately this was also under some reconstruction and only 12km was available. We did it anyway as it was covered by our parks pass.

It was another climb up a mountain with lots of switchbacks. There were a number of pull offs where we were able to get out and admire the views across the town and beyond.

Back to the main road and the decision was made to head for the alpine pipe coaster which was the main reason we had chosen Revelstoke as a stop. We parked in what looks like the resorts' temporary car park cos they are doing lots of building work around the site, and then made our way to guest services and the ticket office at the base of the gondola ride. We chose to do just 1 ride each and were then pointed in the direction of the gondolas for our accent! It was also interesting to see them load the carts in pairs from the coaster, in pairs, onto a gondola car to take them to the top of the ride. We reached the top and then had to choose slide 1 or 2. We went with one! With no queue we were quickly seated with instructions on how to operate the brake and off we went, me first! Such fun twisting your way down the mountain. Very smooth, quite quick and very steep in places. we both loved it and wished we'd got the 2 ride ticket (might think about doing it again in the morning before we leave!)

We made our way to our hotel for tonight, the Best Western, checked and and took some time to relax and think about where to go for dinner.

We settled on The Old School Eatery that is in an old school house. They didn't initially have a table ready so we put our name down for a bit later and walked down to the river and found a bench to sit on.

Back at the restaurant and we ordered Crispy Brussels sprouts for a shared starter. This wasn't really for us, deep fried til the leaves were crisp (burnt), then garnished with pomegranate and pumpkin seeds and a pomegranate reduction! Waitress seemed very surprised we didn't finish them. Fortunately our next choices were much better. Keith had a linguine dish with pan seared salmon and I had Thai red seafood curry with prawns, scallops and mussels. Both meals were enormous but really delicious.