Wives are handy things to have. Mine, for example, occasionally comes up with suggestions for pleasant getaways.
Last autumn, when we drove past the Kebler Corner enclave near the junction of Kebler Pass County Road 12 and Colorado Highway 133, my wonderful wife suggested we should go there sometime. Then in the depths of winter, she suggested we should go rent a cabin for a few days this summer.
I learned a long time ago that wifely “suggestions” are actually “mandates,” so I immediately went online, found a log cabin for two we could afford to rent at Kebler Corner and booked a three-night midweek weekend stay.
Our cabin featured an out-front fire pit, a nice large kitchen inside where my wonder bride could prepare fantastic meals for her most-deserving husband and…
…a bedroom featuring a four-poster bed.
On the side of the cabin, we had a semi-private wooden deck with a picnic table, propane grill and circular “couch.”
While the walls gave us a bit of privacy from the neighbors, our activities were monitored by a family of marmots who resided beneath our deck.
Our first full day there, we explored the facility, checking out their Walmart-style RV campground (not our style)…
…and the spacious (and empty) tent camping area (also not our style).
After declining to try the climbing rock…
…we took a short hike into the hills nearby. Our route took us across Anthracite Creek…
…and up an old road…
to a grassy meadow with great views of the West Elk Range…
…and the dam at Paonia Reservoir.
Up there, we found an old table…
…and some abandoned farm equipment.
We returned to our cabin, had a great steak dinner and prepared for our big hike the following morning.
I awoke Thursday morning to the sound of thunder followed by rain pouring down. I’m from Arizona, which means I don’t hike in the rain. Instead of getting up shortly after the sun, my wonderful wife/alarm clock will, no doubt, let me sleep in.
Didn’t happen.
Dianne checked her Accu-weather app, found that the rain was scheduled to stop soon and it would then be sunny. No extra forty-winks for me. We were going hiking.
Our plan was to hike the Dark Canyon Trail, which follows Anthracite Creek into the mountains. We would go for 4½ miles, turn around and then retrace our steps back to our car at the trailhead near the Erickson Springs Campground.
As my wonderful wife predicted, the rain stopped. We drove to the trailhead and much to my surprise, found that the trail was not muddy.
The scenery was spectacular.
Our route took us into the Raggeds Wilderness Area, which I’d never ventured into before.
Along the trail, we passed a variety of wildflowers in bloom…
…and ripe berries ready to feed a hungry bear.
Of course, we forgot to pack our bear spray.
Fortunately, we never spotted any berry-eating bruins on this hike.
Nine miles after we started, we were in the car and heading back to Kebler Corner for beers on the deck of our cabin.
Once again, our always diligent neighbors greeted our safe return.
Our first day on the road to Canada was a 338-mile drive to Pinedale, Wyoming.
I programmed our destination into the Subaru navigation system, but for some reason Subrina (the navigation lady who lives somewhere behind the car speakers) kept wanting to take us in a direction we didn’t want to go. Finally, halfway up the Roan Plateau, she decided it was futile to keep telling us to turn around and finely allowed us to head on our previously planned route.
Our route took us past a few places we’d visited in the past including Flaming Gorge Reservoir…
…and the Dutch John “Resort” where we stopped for lunch.
We crossed the border into Wyoming and proceeded north to the little town of Pinedale where I had made reservations for us at the Log Cabin Motel.
My goal for our trip was to stay in places that exude a degree of charm, and this definitely fit the goal. The place dates back to 1929 when drivers on their way to Yellowstone would stop for the night.
While sitting out on the front porch sipping wine, we even had some local visitors drop by for a visit.
We got up at the crack of 7:00 a.m. in the morning, ate eggs from home (hard boiled) for breakfast, loaded our toys back into the Subaru and departed the motel under clear blue skies.
To the east rose the mountains of the Wind River Range. Fifty years ago, I did a long backpack below these jagged peaks. This trip, we just admired their beauty from afar. We’ll be back.
We drove north through Jackson, Wyoming, crossed the Tetons into Idaho and turned north toward Helena, Montana…
…our route passing through grassy valleys cloaked in vibrant green.
The blue skies of morning soon turned battleship gray…
…and we ended the last half of our drive to Helena with windscreen wipers swiping glass.
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.
