Under cloudy (and often rainy) skies, we set off for our two-night stay at the Cedar Creek Lodge in Columbia Falls, Montana.
We only made a few photo stops along the way…
…such as these near Salmon Lake, Montana.
After views like this, we finally made it to the portion of the route that our AAA map indicated was scenic. There, we traveled miles and miles with “scenic” views of trees and more trees and nothing but trees.
We soon made it to our lodging at the Cedar Creek Lodge and Conference Center in Columbia Falls, Montana, about 20 miles from Glacier National Park.
Ours was a nice room with a “mountain” view above the shingles of the hotel portico.
Tomorrow, we begin a one-day exploration of Glacier National Park.
We awoke to a drippy day. It had rained all night and it wasn’t letting up. We chose to eat breakfast inside and not out on the patio.
Rain or shine, I was determined to show Dianne at least a part of Glacier National Park, even if we had to do it with the windscreen wipers blasting away. Fortunately, the rain stopped by the time we reached West Glacier.
We entered the park and began driving up the Going to the Sun Road, which follows the edge of Lake McDonald. Peaks poked skyward from across the smooth surface of the lake.
At the north end of the lake, we turned into the lodge area and walked over to the Camp Store. A victim of spousal abuse, I wasn’t allowed to purchase a beautiful ceramic coffee mug.
We strolled past rows of inviting, lakeside cabins…
…and ended up at Lake McDonald Lodge where years ago I spent a night when I was here researching a story.
The lodge doesn’t open until tomorrow, but we were able to poke our heads in for a quick look at the lobby of this onetime hunting lodge.
We continued up the road, stopping several times to admire views of McDonald Creek cascading down the valley.
I kept hoping we’d see a kayaker paddle down the plunging cascades, but it never happened.
It’s early season, and the road over Logan Pass was still awaiting the snowplows. We could only drive as far as Avalanche Creek.
We stopped there and took a short hike down the Trail of the Cedars, an easy-to-navigate boardwalk nature trail.
While I might prefer slickrock desert canyons, the views through the forest were beautiful in a greenish sort of way.
Our trail soon reached Avalanche Gorge where the creek plunges through a slot carved through the rocks.
From here, the trail looped back toward the campground…
…where Subie remained parked beside a puddle.
With skies clearing, we made several photo stops…
…on our way back to the south end of Lake McDonald.
After dinner, we drove back to our hotel, where the skies still remained overcast and dripping.
We left West Glacier early in the morning and set out for Canada…
…taking U.S. Highway 2 around Glacier National Park. As desert dwellers, we’re amazed at how green everything is up here.
We made several stops along the way, the first being the Izaak Walton Inn where one can bunk in a hotel…
…or old railcars.
We stopped at the William H. “Slippery Bill” Morrison memorial atop Maria’s Pass where an obelisk honors Teddy Roosevelt.
At another stop, we pulled into an unmarked turnout to shoot some photos of the towering mountains…
…and discovered this…
…and this.
This part of the drive was on the Blackfeet Reservation, which borders the eastern edge of Glacier National Park. We made two detours back into the park, the first of which took us up Saint Mary Lake.
The other was to the Many Glacier area, home of one of my favorite Glacier Park Lodges, which was not yet open.
From there, we drove north and entered Alberta…
…,where we cleared customs and continued on to the Prince of Wales Hotel, our lodging for the next two nights.
Built in the 1920s, the rooms are small…
…and the lobby large.
From there, we enjoyed a beautiful view of Upper Waterton Lake from the lobby windows.
We dined in the hotel bar…
…and enjoyed glasses of 10-year-old port in the lobby.
With the sun dropping behind the clouds, we watched as the little town of Waterton began to light up.
We had two nights reserved at the Prince of Wales Hotel, and we spent much of our layover day just enjoying the hotel. And with our room going for many $$$$$ per night, we decided to sit back and just enjoy the elegance of our surroundings.
Feeling a bit guilty, we did drive down to explore the Waterton village…
And we drove out to Red Rock Canyon…
…where folks were having a good time playing in and around the water.
We had dining reservations at the hotel that night. There, we enjoyed some tomato soup (definitely better than Campbell’s)…
…followed by Alberta beef (for me) and prairie bison for my lovely wife.
On our getaway day, we had breakfast in town, filled my thermos with coffee from Starbucks…
…used the restrooms (wash rooms in Canada)…
…and took off for British Columbia under rainy skies. Our only major stop was at the site of the Frank Slide, where the top of a mountain slid down to the valley below.
The pile of rubble left behind is quite impressive.
One thing I found pleasant about driving in both Alberta and British Columbia was how nice the roads were. Unlike Colorado, there was nary a pothole to be seen.
The other thing we liked was that even on the two-lane roadways in BC, there were rest areas with picnic tables every 20 miles or so, and the wash rooms came equipped with flush toilets.
Sunday, we overnighted at a cheap motel in Radium Hot Springs. Monday was Victoria Day up here in the Great White North, and we hit a fair amount of traffic as we cruised down Trans Canada Highway 1 through Revelstoke and on to our lodging in Three Valley Gap, a dozen miles beyond.
For the next two nights we would be staying in the Three Valley Lake Chateau…
…with a room overlooking their beautiful gardens…
Our quarters were spacious…
…and the hotel had a pool honoring the Titanic. Even with no icebergs floating by, we opted not to dive in.
Instead, we began our preparations for four days of wine tasting by downing a half-liter of Chardonnay with some BC salmon in the hotel restaurant.
The hotel sports a “ghost town” tourist attraction next door.
It’s not a real ghost town, but it does contain some historic buildings that were relocated here. The ghost town is mostly just a museum of old things…
…and sound advice.
On our layover day in Revelstoke, we drove up into Mount Revelstoke National Park, where Dianne saw a bear (cub). When not driving through a corridor of trees…
…we got some nice views of the town of Revelstoke.
We then drove out to the Revelstoke ski area, a place I first visited around seven or so years ago.
Then we headed into town…
…where we opted not to dine at the Village Idiot Bar & Grill.
Instead, Dianne suggested Mexican-like fare at the Taco Club. I must say that it was a bit strange, but definitely better than the Mexican-like fare Taco Bell.
(Yes, those are shredded carrots and cabbage in the middle of my beef burrito)
We left our chateau and headed for the town of Kelowna where we would meet the others for our Bookcliff Vineyards wine tour. Being the only ones coming by car, we arrived long before the Denver flight folks arrived.
We checked into our room at the Royal Anne Hotel…
…where our second floor room offered sliding glass door access onto a large balcony…
…overlooking Bernard Street, which is closed to traffic during the summer months.
The street is lined with restaurants, and we had no trouble finding a good place to dine.
Instead of enjoying Canadian food here in the Great White North, we dined on southern-style jambalaya served to us by a waitress from the Ukraine.
The next morning we met our group for tasting tours of three wineries. The first was Mt. Boucherie.
I’ve been to Kelowna no fewer than three times and have visited several of the local wineries in the past. Mt. Boucherie was a first for me.
The wine was pretty good, so we bought a couple of bottles to take back home.
Next stop was Mission Hill, which I’d visited several times in the past. They have one of the neatest wine cellars.
Of course, we bought a few bottles here, too.
The final winery of the day was Quail’s Gate, another of my favorites. It lies on the slopes above Lake Okanagan, an 84-mile-long puddle of water that defines the region.
They had the first tasting ready and waiting for our group of 22.
Back at the hotel that evening, we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the lights of Bernard Street.
Day Two of our tasting tour began with a visit to the Cedar Creek Winery (no relation to the Cedar Creek Lodge we stayed at in Montana). This was another new-to-me winery.
In addition to the fermented grape juice, Dianne and I enjoyed photographing the lupines, which were blooming on their hillside garden.
Our second stop of the day was Summerhill Pyramid Winery, an old favorite.
This visit, however, was disappointing. In the past, we’ve always been taken into the pyramid, which is built to the same proportions as the big guys in Egypt. There, we’d learn how bottle aging wine in the pyramid supposedly improves the product. We got none of that on this tour, which means the boys at Bookcliff won’t be trying to figure out how to build a similar pyramid at their winery in Boulder.
Our final winery of the day was Tantalus, which took me a bit to realize I had visited here once before. Nice tour. Good wine.
We had the morning free on our final tasting day, so Dianne and I put on our walkin’ shoes and hit the streets of Kelowna. Avoiding the temptation to buy some Kelownafornia apparel…
…the first stop on our lakeshore stroll was down at the marina.
We continued along the lake, passing various pieces of art such as this bear.
We saw folks out enjoying the lake in sailboats…
…paddling a women’s cancer survivor dragon boat…
…and parasailing high above a boat.
Our turnaround point was the Grand Okanagan Resort hotel, where I stayed on my first visit to Kelowna.
Out on the canal-like water here, we saw kayakers and geese with goslings enjoying the morning calm.
Our driver picked our wine group up at 1:30 in the afternoon for the long drive up the lake to the 50th Parallel Estate Winery.
Then it was off to to Peak Cellars where we had dinner.
Dianne assured me that while it looks disgusting, the green stuff here is actually edible.
Back at the hotel that evening, a few of us sat out on the balcony, enjoying a bit more wine.
The next morning, our wine tasting adventure completed, we loaded the two boxes of wine we had purchased (at least one bottle from each of the eight wineries) into the Subaru and set off on Trans-Canada Highway 1 for North Vancouver.
Along the way, we stopped at a roadside rest area and discovered…
…a food truck…
…and for those in need, there were charging stations for electric vehicles. These Canadians think of everything.
We checked out of our Best Western Motel in North Vancouver and headed to the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay where we got into the line of cars waiting to board. We sympathized with the dogs in the vehicles ahead who wanted to get out and greet each other.
We finally boarded…
…and grabbed second-row seats up front for the two-hour crossing.
The boat departed the small village of Horseshoe Bay…
…and soon left land behind.
Mountains loomed across the open water ahead. It was cool, windy and overcast, just as one would expect in the Vancouver area.
Our arrival on Vancouver Island was at Departure Bay in Nanaimo. We filled up with fuel, and drove across the island to Ucluelet and Pacific Rim National Park.
Bunches of yellow flowers lined much of the forested roadside…
…which Dianne discovered are some variety of broom plant.
Along the way, were welcomed to something…
…passed Kennedy Lake where a break in the forest allowed a view of something other than trees…
…and finally we entered Ucluelet or Ukee as the locals call it.
We checked into our hotel at the Black Rock Resort…
…where we had a third-floor balcony room with a rather nice view…
…and we found that we had bathrobes provided. This almost felt like those bygone days when I was a travel writer bunking around the world on OPM (Other Peoples’ Money). This time the price was paid on my own credit card.
(Sorry kids, but we’re spending your inheritance. Oh wait, we don’t have any kids.)
Dining on seafood in one of the resort’s two restaurants, we enjoyed a bottle of Chardonnay from Tantalus, one of the eight wineries we visited in Kelowna.
After a little in-room, French Press coffee followed by breakfast in the restaurant, we headed out to explore Canada’s Pacific Rim National Park.
Our first stop was the Ucluelet visitor center where we didn’t buy anything – no mugs, no t-shirts, nothing.
Next stop was Wickaninnish Beach…
…which is apparently a popular spot for surfers, all of whom were wearing wet suits.
Our goal was to drive to and explore the town of Tofino…
…which we would have done if we could have found a parking place in town.
Like Banff, Gatlinburg and our own Estes Park, Tofino appears to be just another national park tourist trap packed with businesses designed to separate me from my money. Some people love those kinds of places, but not us. I’m glad we’re bunking in much more sedate Ucluelet.
Tofino and Ucluelet lie about 41 kilometers apart, and there’s a nice bike pathway connecting them. The round-trip ride would be a nice 50 miles. We have friends who would find that to be a pleasant morning ride.
Risking the fate of Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, we stopped for a bathroom break at the Kwisitis visitor center.
Besides clean toilets, it offered some impressive, first nations’ displays inside…
…and views of Wickaninnish Beach outside.
The day was absolutely beautiful. Here, where folks go to storm watch, we were being treated to nearly perfect weather. From our balcony, we could look out on the water reflecting cloudless blue skies.
And since we came to Canada on a wine-tasting trip, we found yet another bottle of Kelowna’s best on the restaurant menu to enjoy with dinner.
The sky was beautifully blue and cloudless when we awoke. We had planned to drive to the top end of the island today, but decided instead simply to hang out at the hotel and watch the waves crash against the rocks. That’s something we don’t experience on Colorado’s Western Slope.
Around midday, Dianne noticed a bank of clouds moving in from the west. We decided to do a loop hike around the local lighthouse before the weather deteriorated.
We drove out to the parking lot for the Amphitrite Lighthouse, and with skies turning 50 shades of gray, we set off down the Wild Pacific Trail, a two-mile loop along the coast and through the trees.
The views of ocean and rocks were stunning.
…with plenty of twisted trees to amuse us.
Completing the loop, we approached the lighthouse from the other side.
A “visitor center” sort of building stood near the lighthouse. Inside we examined the skull of an orca (killer whale). I definitely would not want to tangle with one of these toothy guys.
Instead of dining at the hotel, tonight we dined in the Floathouse, a floating restaurant…
…located by the fishing boats in the Ucluelet marina.
Now, that’s something else we don’t get to do in western Colorado.
Our Ucluelet stay completed, we packed our bags, paid our bill (ouch) and were soon driving back across the island and down to Victoria on the southern coast of Vancouver Island.
A few observations about driving in Canada: Speed limits are merely suggestions, tailgating is the norm and Canadians aren’t afraid to pass, regardless of curves and double yellow lines. For the most part, the pavement is more intact than most roads in Colorado.
We arrived in Victoria, found our Days Inn motel, and checked into our room, which cost more per night than our quarters at the Black Rock Resort.
After hauling our gear up to the room, we hit the streets. The hotel is located along the waterfront…
…directly across the street from the ferry that we’ll take to get back to the U.S.A.
Close to downtown, the area offers paved walking trails to explore…
…from which we watched water taxis scoot across the harbor…
…and float planes take to the air.
We “dined” at Victoria’s version of Fisherman’s Wharf, a collection of small eateries along the waterfront.
There, we shared a table with a couple from Tennessee who were returning from a voyage to Alaska on one of these things:
After dinner, Dianne and I walked over to the cruise ship docks and gazed at these floating cities. This Royal Caribbean vessel has 2,091 guest rooms and can accommodate 4,180 guests. Our river cruise boat in Portugal held 30 passengers. That’s more our style.
