Road Trip! - Part 1

We finally got to take a real holiday this year so we packed up Stella to the brim with all our gear and did a big camping road trip across BC and Alberta. We covered 3100km (approx 2000mi), blew through 5 litres of oil, stopped wherever we felt like it and had a great time doing it.

Day 1
We drove from Van to Merritt, where my good friend Sandra lives. We spent the night there, hanging out with her, 2 of her teenaged boys and her RCMP officer husband, who was stuck on nightshift and didn't get home until 5:30 am. Normally I only see her on Massage Therapists' Assoc business, so it was great to have a chance to hangout without that stress and "shop talk". It was extra nice because she and I got to gab ourselves silly while her 17-year old and Theovis killed one another on the computer. They were having fun. We were having fun. It was great.

Day 2 and 3
We drove through Kamloops, stopping for groceries and fuelling up on Starbucks before heading out for Glacier National Park to camp. We stopped at the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railroad (a train even came by while we were there) as well as at the Crazy Creek waterfalls and suspension bridge on our way. Unfortunately, once we arrived at Glacier park, none of the campsites in were open yet, but since it was fricking cold and we had seen both a black bear and a young grizzly snacking on dandilions by the side of the highway, we weren't completely crushed (but we were nervous every time we spotted dandilions from then on). We kept driving on to Golden where Theovis' dad and his wife live. They have a beautiful property outside Golden where her Grandparents had homesteaded. I can't remember how many acres of land they have but we walked around the property a bunch, looking at old buildings and barns, while accompanied by an entourage of 3 dogs and a cat (who had an extra toe on each foot). It was extremely comical because 2 of the dogs are huge farm dogs, one is a teeny dog you'd expect to yap except it doesn't, and the cat was a handsome fellow sporting a bell to warn the birds away. They all followed us on the entire walk which took the better part of an hour. Both the little dog and the cat were tuckered out at the end of it, whereas their other cat genty raised his head from his pillow as we all came back into the house.

The next day, we all went for a hike along a river to some spectacular falls. Both Donna and I were sporting bear bells (to hopefully scare them away) which the lads thought was pretty funny. Theovis and I discussed the possibility of the bells actually driving the bears into a murderous rage but we really hoped that wasn't the case. We saw some beautiful flowers including some miniature wild orchids, which unfortunately didn't photograph well. After our walk, we went to a Wolf Centre where they train wolves that have been born in captivity for the film industry as well as acting as an educational centre for the area, where wolves are highly misunderstood and undervalued. It was very interesting and I got to touch a 42-day old pup.

Day 4
We drove from Golden to the Columbia Icefields in Jasper, where we went on a tour out onto the Athabasca glacier. I'd done that tour as a kid and remembered it as being pretty cool. The scenery was spectacular during the drive and we even got snowed on a bit when we stopped at a view point. We saw 2 more bears and a few mountain goats during this stretch. We were glad we'd packed the warm weather gear - long johns, winter coats, wool socks etc. - once we were out on the glacier. We could only walk in specific areas to prevent people from falling into ever-moving crevasses, which I suppose is reasonable. After touring the glacier we drove back to Banff after having to pay $1.02/litre(!) for gas - in Alberta, where they're nearly crapping it out - and missing the turn off for Lake Louise, where we intended to camp. We also missed the turnoff we needed to take to get to the campsite in Banff so we drove an extra 20 minutes or so to backtrack. On this stretch we saw a dude who had flown past us at an alarming speed (I was doing 120kph at the time) getting a speeding ticket. I felt some schadenfreude, I must confess.

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