Golden, BC

We rented a house in Golden. We had our choice of a fancy cabin in a resort on the mountain or a much cheaper plain house on the river. We chose the cheaper option, and we chose wisely. It wasn't the best house, but it had a hot tub and comfy beds and a kitchen. There's not much else needed on vacation!

The view from the front yard (and the hot tub):


On the other side of the river, there was an adventure camp which offered parachuting. Several times a day, we'd see parachuters coming down for a landing.


Golden is a nice tourist town. They had a grocery store, bookstore, and candy shop. Andrew left his book on the plane, so we checked in at the bookstore to see if they had a copy. Nope, but I did get a cool print of Emerald Lake. The candy shop was fun too.

The train tracks were right by our house. We were worried about trains waking us at 2 am, but that didn't happen. Connor especially loved running out to see how many engines the trains had front and back.

In the mountains between Golden and Banff, there was a neat-o way for the trains to get up and over the hills - spiral tunnels. Here's what it looks like on Google Maps:


In real life they are pretty cool:


At the information stop for the spiral tunnels, they had other tunnels for the little trains!


Ok, so all this talk about trains is really to talk about the steam train that came through Golden on Friday. It was on its way to the west.


Downtown Golden is nice to walk around, including a huge pedestrian bridge crossing the river. Naturally, there's a cache near here.