Not a birthday trip part five - Spiral Tunnels! UNESCO sites!

As we are driving to the Spiral Tunnels in Field, BC, we see a train coming. Since there is no guarantee of there being a train at the tunnels, we (and everyone else on the highway) decide to boot it. We beat the train there and I'm reading the signs before it gets too crowded. We got a good spot to view the tunnels.

I turned to my mom and said, "Do you know what they say about the tracks?"
Mom says that no, she does not.
"They say," I said sagely, "That there is one dead Chinese man for every mile of the track."
"Is that what they say?" Ernie asked.
"That's what they say," I nodded.
Mom doesn't understand why this is funny.

There are three points where you can see the train and if you're lucky you can see it entering the tunnel and exiting at the same time.

This was a long ass train so we got to see it at all three points (look for the colour in the bottom right).

It took a good half an hour from beginning to end.
The spiral tunnels will always be remarkable to me because they prove that where there's a will, there's a way.

The Kicking Horse River is beautiful and patient, despite how it rages. It has worn a path through the rocks over countless millennia and will continue to do so until well past when we're all gone.

The water will do as it pleases.

I have a habit of inadvertently collecting UNESCO World Heritage sites. I have visited probably about 50 in my lifetime with a goal of seeing more. In fact, my "win the lottery" trip is with a company that takes a year or two and travels to all the UNESCO sites in the world, first class.

Since naming Burgess Shale as a UNESCO site, it has been reclassified - along with Banff, Jasper, Kootenay and Yoho national parks and Mount Robson, Mount Assiniboine and Hamber provincial parks - as one site, Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks. Which is kind of bogus because Burgess Shale was a site for reasons other than a "striking mountain landscape". There were Cambrian and almost Pre-Cambrian fossils of marine animal life and is one of the most significant fossil areas in the world. Even though it is within the park, it should still be its own site. But I digress.

Emerald Lake is pretty. So is Burgess Shale.

Your bear bells are ineeffective.

As is your sign.

Next: Banff!