Category: Trips

After three days of driving north from Colorado, we finally made it to British Columbia.  We entered the Great White North at Roosville, the second busiest Canadian entry point from the state of Montana.  There was nobody ahead of us in line and nobody behind.  Apparently few folks go from Montana to Canada on a Saturday morning, and the border guard seemed grateful to have something to do.

We assured him we carried no guns, tasers, mace or pepper spray, and he didn’t ask about any beer, wine, meats or vegetables we might be smuggling in.  The whole border crossing took less time that it takes to clear a California agricultural bug stop.

We’re diving right into the Canadian way of life.  I set the Garmin to kilometres (yes, we’re even using Canadian spellings), which was great for monitoring our speed, but distances suddenly seemed incredibly longer.  I reset our indoor/outdoor thermometer to register Celsius, and we can no longer look at it and tell if we’re comfortable or not.

“It says it’s 25 outside.  Is that good or bad?” Dianne asked.

We filled up with fuel at the local Who-Knows-What gas station, sloshing in enough litres of fuel that if it were the same number in gallons, it would overflow the tank in our neighbor’s motor mansion.  And the final price in Canadian dollars would have made a good down payment on that motorhome.  Fortunately, with the favorable exchange rate, everything comes at about 30% off.

We’re now tucked away in our campsite in Kootenay National Park outside Radium Hot Springs.  There’s a fresh, 24-pack of Kokanee beer tucked away in the fridge and we’ve got a 120-volt electrical hookup, so we can run the air conditioner.  We just need to figure out if 25 degrees is hot or not.

Our first night in Canada was at the Redstreak (not to be confused with “Red Stripe,” the Jamaican beer) Campground in Kootenay National Park.  Unlike American national park campgrounds, this one boasted eight different loops with varying amenities.  It reminded me of our Army Corp of Engineers campgrounds.

We had a 120-volt hookup onsite, but unlike some of the other loops, no water or sewer.  The bathroom, which had free showers, was directly across the street from our site.  Not only was that very convenient for those of us who don’t have an onboard bathroom, but it also allowed us to chat with fellow campers on their way to or from the facilities.

One woman from Vernon, British Columbia, was enamored with our U.S. and Canada state/province decal maps.  I explained that where we come from, all new owners are required to put them on their trailers to show where they’ve been.  Using our maps as a reference, she finger-drew where she and her husband had been on their Canada and U.S. adventures.

“We like traveling in your country” she told us, “because gas is so much cheaper.”

Sunday morning, we departed Kootenay and headed toward Banff National Park in Alberta.  Less than 15 kilometres up the highway, we passed a grizzly dining along the roadway.  If that happened in Grand Teton or Yellowstone National Parks, traffic would have come to a standstill as folks poked cameras or their kids out car windows to get a shot.  The three cars ahead of us on the road didn’t even slow down.

While the campground seemed like Corps of Engineer sites, driving through the length of Kootenay National Park seemed like motoring through an American national forest.  There were a few scenic pullouts with interpretive placards, but nothing special.

We turned off onto the road to Lake Louise and were immediately greeted by something I’ve never seen in an American national park – guys in dayglow green jumpsuits directing traffic.  Seeing our trailer, the traffic coordinator motioned us forward.  But I was following Garmie (the voice on our Garmin navigator) who said we should turn left in 200 metres.

Now, I’m used to her saying things like “turn in 200 feet,” which is like right now, so I turned at the next intersection.  We proceeded up the wrong street to where it dead-ended.  I tried to save face by stopping at the corner gas station for a fill up.  Back on the street, this time I followed the guy in the dayglow jumpsuit.

Lake Louise has two campgrounds.  One is for hard-sided units only and has 120-volt hookups.  The other, for tents and canvas popup trailers, has no hookups and lies surrounded by a 7,000-volt electric fence, designed to keep the bears out.  We opted to live dangerously and reserved a site in the hard-sided section.

“Do you get many bear maulings here?” I asked the lad at the campground check-in booth.

“We don’t like to talk about that,” he replied in a dead-serious voice.

After sitting on our butts for 1,200 miles, we decided our first full day at Lake Louise would be a hiking day.  We started out on a trail that parallels the river behind camp.

After a short detour through the tent campground (we wanted to see how the other half lives), we headed up the Louise Creek Trail to the lake.  We met only one other hiker on the trail, and he was carrying a can of bear spray.  So were we.

Just short of the lake, the trail passes by a parking lot where dayglow-clad attendants were directing traffic.  I chatted with one between cars.

“Saturday was the biggest day we’ve ever had up here,” he told me, “and Sunday was even busier.  Today looks like it will beat even that!”

We continued up the trail to the lake.  There, thousands of people formed a virtual human shield around water’s edge.  Armed with cameras ranging from iPhones to pro-grade SLRs, they shot selfies, they shot loved ones and they shot their groups.  No one appeared to be photographing the beauty of the setting.

A cacophony of human voices filled the air in a myriad of languages.  English was occasionally one of them.

We attempted to escape the Disney-worthy crowd by taking the two-kilometre route to the far end of the lake, but the trail proved to be a walking version of a downtown freeway during rush hour.

Rather than return the way we came, we followed the horse route back.  The trail was chewed up, muddy and reeked of horse puckies, but it was totally human free.  It made us appreciate the smell of equines.

We stopped at the towering, Chateau Lake Louise hotel in the hopes of quaffing a brew with a view, but we were turned away.

“Sorry, but with the rainstorm due in 40 minutes, we’re limiting seating to hotel guests,” the hostess told us in a very pleasant voice.

Rain in 40 minutes?  With at least an hour’s hike back to camp staring at us, we declined.  We raced back down the Louise Creek Trail faster than my hiking buddy, Mick, heading for a trail’s end beer.  If we’d met a bear on the trail, it would have needed to sprint to catch us.

Sixty-two minutes later, we reached our campsite safe and dry.  It never did rain.

One characteristic of national parks, especially premier parks such as Banff, is that they draw visitors from all over the world.  And that includes us.  We’re visitors to Canada from that big foreign country to the south.

Banff’s international draw is reflected in our campground.  A quick survey suggests that around one-third of all the RVs in the campground (this is the hard-sided campground where everybody is in a trailer or motorhome) are rentals.  Seldom do we hear our fellow campers speaking in English, and while we see a few Quebec license plates, I don’t hear much French either.

Normally in campgrounds, we like to chat with our neighbors.  But nobody does that here.  It’s like a big, impersonal hotel where everyone keeps to themselves.

“These folks are not campers,” my lovely wife observes.  “They’re simply parking here for the night in their mobile motels.”

I’d like to say it was painful to leave Lake Louise, but it wasn’t.

The campground was packed with RV renters who for the most part didn’t know the etiquette of camping.  The family next to us apparently could only communicate by shouting, and the “do not wash dishes or laundry in washroom sinks” didn’t apply to many of our neighbors.

We did truly enjoy the beauty of the Canadian Rockies.  One day we took the 200+ kilometre drive up the Icefields Parkway from Lake Louise to Jasper.  Dark craggy mountains draped with hanging glaciers line both sides of the roadway, which provide enough photo fodder to satisfy a National Geographic shooter.  Last time I came through here was in the winter when the roadway was as white as the hills.  This time the pavement was black, the peaks gray and runoff-engorged waterfalls silvery white.

In Jasper, we visited the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge where Dianne and I stayed a few years back on a winter ski visit and the deep gorge of Maligne Canyon where we took a winter hike.  In the depths of winter, the stream is frozen and its walls lie draped with ice.  Back then, the walk up felt like we were hiking up a rocky, glacial crevasse.

No canyon-bottom hikes this time.  Raging with runoff, we looked down on a canyon roaring with water plunging over boulders and pouring down waterfalls.

The next day we drove down to Banff to do laundry, groceries and most importantly, stock up on beer and wine.

Located totally within the park, Banff has all the character of Aspen, Vail and Estes Park crammed into one packed town.  The supermarket had fewer parking spaces than the average Starbucks and laundromats in this tourist-oriented town were few and far between.

But we succeeded in refilling the trailer pantry, restocking the trailer wine (and beer) cellar and reloading our trailer duffels with clean clothes.  The Xterra gas tank is now topped up with fuel and we were ready to escape this incredibly beautiful but overcrowded tourist magnet.

 From Lake Louise, we drove the freeway-like Trans-Canada highway past Banff, dropped out of the mountains, rounded Calgary and headed east into the Canadian prairie.  The terrain gently rolled with undulating hills covered with green and yellow crops and dotted with small, blue water ponds.  Sorry flatlanders, but we both agreed the landscape was far more attractive than crossing the Great Plains through Kansas or Nebraska.

Our destination is Dinosaur Provincial Park, a World Heritage site known for offering more dinosaur bones for its size than anywhere else in the world.  We checked into a grassy campground shaded with leafy cottonwood trees with nearby pit toilets.  Flush toilets, free showers and a burger-cooking restaurant were available a few hundred metres away.

While bones sparked the park’s creation, we came to explore and photograph the park’s badland topography.  The landscape features a river and glacial-carved landscape covered in mounds of bentonite that’s been molded into an array of standing hoodoos and rilled peaklets.  Cameras in hand, we hiked the park’s scenic loop drive, all five of the park’s interpretive trails and took a guided sunset drive into the park’s limited-admittance backcountry.  We also swatted a myriad of mosquitoes.

Our stay overlapped Canada Day, which is like our 4^th of July, but they do theirs four days earlier.  July 1^st marks the day 150 years ago when the British colonies came together to form what is now Canada.  Falling on a Saturday, it was duly celebrated by a slew of families out camping with their kids and the family dog(s).  I have to say that the interaction of the parents and children in this natural setting was a delight to watch.

The downside of having so many families sharing the campground was that the showers were always crowded and with the hot water supply frequently depleted.  They may have been frigid, but at least they were free.

We are on a quest for the best poutine in Canada!  Surprise, Surprise!

[Poutine, for those of you not in the know, is a Canadian creation that consists of French fries covered with cheese curds and smothered in gravy.]

Years ago, we had some awesome poutine at a restaurant in Jasper.  We revisited it on this trip.  The poutine was okay, but not like we remembered.

But now in Regina, Saskatchewan, we had great poutine at Leopold’s Tavern.  Dianne had “Smoked Meat Poutine – the Best of Montreal and Quebec Combined in One” – with artery clogging bacon, Canadian bacon and fries smothered in beef gravy and white cheddar curds.  MMMMMM!

I had “Jalapeno Poppers Poutine,” which was a spicy, south of two borders taste treat.

Both were pretty awesome, and neither of us could finish them all.  The best poutine competition is going to be tough as we make our way across “The Great White North.”

We’re having a great time and seeing some incredible sights: Canadian Rockies, the badlands of Alberta and grasslands of Saskatchewan.  Internet has been very sparse at the places we’ve stayed, but we have a bit better connection here in Regina for a few days.  

It’s a 21^st century, first-world problem.

In my writings, I used to make fun of people who constantly needed to be connected to cell service.  “Cellaholics” I called them.

Well, we just went through four days of cellular withdrawal and it was painful.  We were camped at Dinosaur Provincial Park, deep in the hinterlands east of Calgary.  Only if we drove to high ground could we could get one bar of cell coverage.  It was enough to allow Dianne to make a garbled call to her mom, but otherwise worthless.

The park did offer free Wi-Fi, but at 0.06 mbs, it was only slightly faster than my dinosaur-era AOL dial-up service.  Downloading e-mails took longer than an extra-innings baseball game.

We’re now in Regina, camped in an RV park where we have a full three bars of cell coverage and in-park Wi-Fi.  “Be patient,” the check-in clerk advised.  “It’s not high speed.”

I measured it at around three mbs, which compared to the prehistoric speed at Dinosaur, seems positively fast.  We’ve reentered the 21^st century.

Just as with the plains states of the U.S., we assumed there would be little of interest in the prairie provinces of Canada. But we’re finding our drive through the flatlands to be quite delightful. I can put the Xterra in sixth gear, engage cruise control and sip coffee as we motor past huge fields of yellow-green canola blossoms.

I’m as happy as a trucker with a tailwind until my honey says she wants to stop and get a photo of the plants.

We’re now in Manitoba, camped at Riding Mountain National Park. The first question I asked at the Visitor Centre was “where’s the mountain?”

The young lady admitted there was no “mountain.” When settlers came into the area, the higher grounds here made them think they were in the mountains. No telling what they thought when they got to the Canadian Rockies in Alberta.