Oh Canada!

O Canada! Where pines and maples grow, Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow!

Days 11, 12 & 13 – crossed the 2,000 mile mark.

     The freedom to drive along the road and notice some place that could be interesting or even incredible … that freedom to respond and pull over … even turn around and go back ... that is a wonderful madness. Many times on our first two days in Canada, we did just that. We did set a schedule, a plan for how far to travel in a day, where or when to stop for the night. But the option to stray from the plan is what makes our trip extraordinary.

     Driving into Canada at the border in Idaho was touchy … so many people warned us they had the experience where their Roadtrek interior was tossed looking for contraband. Yet Dan’s friendliness and affability won out once again as the border agent asked a half dozen questions about our travels and what we carried and then waved us on.

    
 Our aim was to travel north to TransCanada Hwy 1 and then east to the Icefields Parkway in Banff/Jasper National Parks. But near the end of our travel day, fortuitously a sign appeared: ‘3-par golf and RV Park’. Early the next morning found us out on the most stunningly verdant golf course ... nature, exercise, and an embarrassingly awful score. The languid deer laughed with us as the trees and ponds reached out and snatched our balls right out of the air.

     
     The next day we pulled over to a rest area on the TransCanada to catch a sight we’d seen before three years ago. There we met a young lady who had been sitting there for over an hour waiting for a train to go by ... with no idea that one would even come. WHY would she do that? Because this is indeed an amazing place. The original 4.5% grade train track was prohibitive and many trains were lost (not to mention the difficulty and cost).

     In 1907 they replaced it with a double spiral through two tunnels … a figure 8 path across the Kicking Horse Valley. (See the picture) And again … miraculous chance … a train did come through! (The same good luck three years ago, when we stopped here). The train traveling east from British Columbia follows the track into tunnels that spiral inside two different mountains going east, north, west, east, west, south, east, north, and finally east again heading to Alberta. 

     Oh, that young lady? Visiting from Holland traveling alone in a Class B Travado across British Columbia.

Banff/Jasper National Parks

Marvels like the natural wonders of our earth cannot be expressed with mere words … so a few pictures … (that also fall short of the experience.)

We saw bears three times. 

 Lake Louise

Athabasca Falls in Jasper 

Weeping Wall in Jasper

Peoples ... Visited with the lady from Holland; a student from the Colorado School of Mines … from Australia; and two gentlemen on a hike to a waterfall … from Spain.

Leaving Prince George BC this morning heading north to Dawson Creek, where mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway begins.
(May be a while before we get internet again.)