This was a full day, 26 km with a bonus 4 km section through Yoho National Park with Class 2, 3, and 4 rapids down the Kicking Horse River with Alpine Rafting Company with a riverside BBQ lunch.  We chose this company from all the rest primarily because the website said there was free camping included.  We thought this was a great perk when choosing this company.  We got into Golden in the evening, after a full day of hiking, and went straight to the camping spot which was about 20 km north of Golden.  It was lovely, right on the river, nicely treed, needed a 4×4 to get down to it.  The one thing it was lacking though was an outhouse.  Shannon made the call to drive back into Golden and try and find somewhere that had at least an outhouse.  Turns out there are only 2 campgrounds in Golden and they were both full.  We drove out of town to a forestry site which was also full.  In the end we set up our tent on the side of a forestry road in the dirt about 4 km outside of town (which also was lacking an outhouse), and had more mosquitos than one has ever seen in a lifetime.  So Alpine Rafting’s camping spot is where we should have just stayed initially.  Rafting was great.  The first half was pretty calm but the second half was much more exciting with a lot larger rapids.  The water level was a bit low, so if we were to go again we think end of June would probably make things more exciting.  Beautiful scenery being right on the river, definitely something you cannot see while driving by.

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