Mount Revelstoke National Park
British Columbia, Canada
Completed: July 2017
Senior Friendly
Mount Revelstoke National Park is on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, near the busy town of Revelstoke and along the Columbian River. We entered from the west, along Trans Canada Highway 1, a busy cross-country highway which cuts through the middle of the park.
This was our first view of the red chairs, Parks Canada has placed pairs of the chairs in the parks. A place to sit and enjoy a special spot in the parks. I found this one along the Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk, an easy trail just off the highway.
This program is considered Senior Friendly, as no age levels are given. Only three activities are required to become an Xplorer. The activities include; Use Your Senses, Take A Look, Search For, Figure it Out, Get Moving, Try it Out, Figure it Out, Search For, Take a Look, Create your Own, Go Meet and Find It.
Most of those titles don’t give you much of an idea of the activity, so I’ll briefly describe the ones that I completed. We visited seven of the parks in a week, so not much time was spent in any one park. I appreciated that only three activities had to be completed and there was a great variety of activities.
Search For was a wordsearch for 24 plant names of plants found in this park. Figure it Out was a crossword about ski jumping, a sport with history at Revelstoke. For Take a Hike I walked along the Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk, much more pleasant than the name hints. Besides finding the red chairs I enjoyed the walk along sections of boardwalk and into a dense forest.
Search For has two options; find 100 animals in the park or find 12 animals pictured in a colorful graphic in the book. With my limited time I chose the easier and faster activity of finding the 12 animals. Overall the graphics in this booklet are excellent and really nice for this activity.
A scavenger hunt at Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk completed the activity for Take A Look. I saw quite a few of the items listed, however I did not see an American Dipper which I saw later at another park on our trip. I attempted Find It, a Bingo! Square, but was unable to complete a row of four. Almost, but not four in a row. It was fun to look for the items, I wished I could have found more along the way.
I brought the booklet to a visitor center in Glacier National Park. After reviewing the booklet and discussing my visit the staff signed the certificate contained in the booklet declaring me an ‘Official Parks Canada Xplorer’. I also received the colorful Xplorer dog tag. Even though I didn’t spend a full day in this park I found the activities a great way to experience Mount Revelstoke National Park.
*The Canadian Encyclopedia
Junior Ranger - Senior Friendly Programs 