18 posts tagged “road trip”

Day 18 - August 2. Thunder Bay to The Soo.

All the posts about my 2007 Road Trip solo adventure can be found here.

With Kincardine just two days of driving away I was excitedly anticipating getting "home" even though I haven't lived there since the 1970s. It suddenly seemed important to contact everybody. My cell phone service provider provides no service in Thunder Bay and I resorted to the motel's land lines. It irked me to spend additional money on long distance phone calls when I had lots of cash pre-loaded onto my cell phone account just for making long distance calls.

Left Thunder Bay on the morning of August 2 with 5053 km on my car's trip odometer.

There are tantalizing glimpses of Lake Superior. But the scenery is mainly rocks and trees and trees and rocks and more trees. And microwave transmission towers. Also road construction. And patronizing Ministry of Transport signs.

In Sault Ste. Marie ("The Soo") I stayed at the Super 8 Motel ($119.70). I guess I should have expected it from just looking at the map, but The Soo surprised me with its American-style restaurant chains and busy tourist motels interspersed with strip malls and abandoned boarded-up stores along Great Northern Road. I had expected something a little more laid back and rustic given that I was in Northern Ontario a long way away from any large city. I had a ok/average supper at the busy and packed-with-tourists North 82 Steak & Beverage Co restaurant, a short walk from the motel.

But I was in The Soo only overnight on the east-bound leg of my trip and didn't have time to see anything except the motel strip on Great Northern Road, one of the major arteries leading to and from the International Bridge linking Canada with the USA.

In September, six weeks later on the west-bound leg of my trip, my experience of The Soo was completely different, as if I was in some other city. I'll tell that story in some future post.

In The Soo my cell phone worked again and I caught up on my voicemail messages and then my brother and I exchanged several text messages as he passed along information about the Chi-Cheemaun Ferry schedule and how long it takes to drive to the ferry terminal. I decided to get up extra early to make sure I made it in time for the 1:30pm sailing. Getting stuck on the wrong side of a Great Lake on the day I wanted to arrive in Kincardine was not something I wanted to chance.

Day 17 - August 1. Winnipeg to Thunder Bay.

All the posts about my 2007 Road Trip solo adventure can be found here.

I took only three pictures on August 1st, all at the 90 Degrees West Tourism Info Centre/Rest Stop near Thunder Bay. My mind was on reaching the town where I grew up and where my parents still live, Kincardine Ontario. While the rocks and trees of Northern Ontario are almost as interesting as the mountains of BC and badlands of Alberta I was just not into photography at the time.

I left my friends' place at about 10am with 4350 km on the odometer and after short stops for gasoline, ice and coffee wound my way through Winnipeg east to the Trans-Canada. Stopped for lunch at 1pm in Kenora, east of the Manitoba/Ontario border. 4559 km.

Road Signs

One way you can tell you've passed from one province into another are the road signs. BC has signs pointing to parks and scenic views and picnic spots. Alberta's signs concentrate on place names and distances. Saskatchewan doesn't really have much in the way of signs at all. Manitoba's signs are mainly about watching out for the jumping deer.

Ontario's road signs instruct you on proper behaviour. Many of them are the electronic signs with changeable messages. I should have written down what all the signs actually said since I'm forgetting the details now. Drivers sure get nagged at in Northern Ontario.

Buckle Up, Arrive Alive! This is pretty much the first sign you see after you cross from Manitoba into Ontario. I suppose Ontario's Ministry of Transportation has a poor opinion of people's conformance with seatbelt laws in the rest of Canada.

Slow down! Then, further along after the slow down sign, another large sign has several lines detailing the escalating fines for various speeding ranges over the limit. As far as I could tell speed limits are pretty much ignored by Ontario drivers who seem to randomly drive anything from 40 km/hr under to 40 km/hr over the speed limit. I decided to stay just below the lowest range eligible for a fine. As a result, when road and weather conditions permitted, I exceeded the speed limit through most of Northern Ontario but I never qualified for a speeding fine. Makes a lot of sense, eh?

Fatigue Kills! Pull over and have a rest! This, despite the fact there's never a rest stop and no room on the side of the highway to pull over for several miles on either side of these signs.

Construction Ahead, Slow Down! On Hwy 17 in Northern Ontario, there's construction ahead, construction behind, construction on the left and construction on the right. It seems like almost the entire highway from the Manitoba border to where I turned south at Espanola is under construction. And the parts that don't have construction going on still have signs warning about construction.

Moose Crossing. I was on a constant lookout for moose but I never saw a single one. Disappointed, I was. I think there are more moose warning signs in Ontario than there are moose.

And then there are the signs with variations on the Drink and Drive and Die theme.

Northern Ontario, where you can't see the trees and rocks for the Ministry of Transport's preachy signs.

Hwy 1?

In Northern Ontario the Trans-Canada is called Hwy 17 instead of Hwy 1. I wonder why?

Thunder Bay

In Thunder Bay I planned to stay at the HI hostel which, in the summer, is in the Sibley Hall residence at Confederation College. I had not been able to reach them by phone from Winnipeg so I thought I would just drive there and see what's what. When I got there, the doors were locked, there's no buzzer to get in and I couldn't see anyone around. There was a number on a notice taped to the door but my cell phone doesn't work in Thunder Bay. After standing around for a few minutes hoping that someone would show up I gave up and got back into my car. I spent the night at the Thunder Bay Travelodge ($88.79).

Thunder Bay did look like an interesting place and I thought that if I came through Northern Ontario on my return to BC, I would spend more time here. In fact, I did. If I ever get anound to writing posts about my return journey and my stay in Thunder Bay, I will write more about the place. It was definitely worth the visit.

Days 13-16 - July 28-31. Winnipeg.

All the posts about my 2007 Road Trip solo adventure can be found here.

On July 28 I left the Swift Current Travelodge and drove the Trans-Canada east to Winnipeg making it to my destination by about 8pm. This was my longest day on the road so far, ten hours including short stops for food and gas. By the time I struggled upright out of my car at my hosts' home in Winnipeg I had pretty much lost all of my thrill for the "open road".

I have very few photographs to show and nothing really exciting happened to write about but I'll mention a few things about the day's driving and my stay in Winnipeg anyway.

But It's Not Flat!

I thought all of Saskatchewan would be completely flat, so flat that you can see forever to where the Earth curves down at the horizon. You know, like in all of those pictures you see of the flat prairie - fields of wheat or canola stetching away far away until they meet the clouds, the razor straight edge of the horizon interrupted by a single barn or grain elevator. In fact, Saskatchewan is not flat. It's full of hollows and low rolling hills and small ponds of water packed with ducks and little streams and curvy landscapes. I should have taken pictures...

Bad Roads

Saskatchewan's segment of the Trans-Canada was by far the worst maintained, the roughest, and the most difficult to drive section of highway that I enountered on my entire road trip. And that includes all the itty-bitty little paved roads I took through BC's mountain ranges, the inescapable construction everywhere on Northern Ontario's highways, and Manitoba's highways too, despite my Winnipeg hosts' insistence that anything in Manitoba is worse than anything anywhere else.

Credit Card Troubles

During the day, one of my credit cards was refused twice at two separate gas stations. Got glared at quite severely by the attendant at one of the stations although he did brighten up when I produced my other credit card. I had neglected to tell either of my credit card issuers about all the long distance travelling I was doing over the summer and I suppose buying gas twice a day triggered some fraud detection software algorithm somewhere. A phone call from Winnipeg to the 1-800 number on the back of the card the next day fixed everything up again. But the fact that it took more than 3700 kilometers of gas fill-ups makes me wonder just how effective those fraud-catching programs are. The issuer of my backup card continued to happily fulfil my every spending whim thoughout my entire 10-week, 5-province trek.

Road Kill

East of Brandon I crested a hill and then had to quickly change lanes to avoid a dead white-tail deer sprawled across the highway. About three hundred metres further on a minivan was pulled over to the right, its hood bent up and the front end completely smashed. Major damage. I wondered how they made it that far after hitting the deer. Two small children and their parents were standing in the ditch beside the minivan, the kids obviously upset. I slowed down to see if they needed help but there are already a couple of other vehicles stopped and people milling around so I kept on going.

A Few Days in One Spot

Spending a few days in one place was a welcome break even though the weather in Winnipeg was beastly hot. I stayed with friends in their air conditioned house and we went for walks, shopped in McNally's (a fabulous bookstore), had hotdogs and ice cream at Skinners World Famous Hotdogs, toured a few tourist spots, drank a few beers, and generally had a good visit.

Missing My PC

I also had the opportunity to satisfy techno-geek urges by playing around with their Apple computer. I've had more than six years to figure out my digital camera. My iPod is too simple a device to provide techie entertainment that strays much beyond playing the music and looking at the pictures I had loaded on it. And it had been several days since I had finished exhaustedly exploring every single menu option and technical feature available on my new cell phone. I was craving a gadget fix. Of course, if the Apple Mac had not sufficed I could have exhumed The Big Guy's handheld GPS out of the depths of my trunk so things weren't really too desperate yet.

Get Out The Maps

On the 31st I felt restless and found myself studying maps again. It was time to go. So, the next morning I said good bye to my friends and promised to stop in if I passed through Winnipeg on my return journey. After stops for a Starbucks Americano, a bag of ice and a gasoline fillup, I was eastward bound for Northern Ontario.

Grammar Nit-Pick

Just in case you're as anal-retentive as I am and have noticed that I sometimes write these travel posts in present tense, sometimes in a past tense, and occasionally I even switch tenses within a single post, don't worry, you're not alone, it's driving me crazy too. I'm trying to write in present tense but sometimes the stuff I'm writing about just doesn't lend itself to present tense writing and it's no use trying to force the words to be something they don't want to be.

Day 12 - July 27. Drumheller.

Looks like I might be churning out just one or two episodes a month on my solo 2007 Road Trip adventure from the west coast of BC to Ontario and back. Previous posts are here.

But I have been too busy to post!

Photography course. House hunting. Christmas shopping. Gift wrapping. House cleaning. Sorting through a huge 30-year accumulation of papers, books, finished and almost-finished and never-started craft projects, clothes gone out of style in the 1980s, more books, job-hunting papers, coffee mugs, travel souvenirs, computer bits and pieces, eBay inventory, shipping supplies, VHS recordings of old TV shows, a drawer packed full of plastic bags (intended for reuse), outdated computer games and other obsolete software, yet more books, unlabeled CDs, and weird collections of things that I was momentarily obsessed with at some point in time. And that's just my stuff. You should see The Big Guy's stuff!

Anyway, back to the Road Trip.

July 27th is my second day in Drumheller, "Heart of the Canadian Badlands" and "Where The Dinosaurs Roamed". I wake up early, too excited about my plans to visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology to sleep much past sunrise.

I arrive at the museum a few seconds after it opens and immediately sign up for the 90 minute Dinosite Tour. "Prospect for fossils! Investigate real dinosaur remains!"

It's hot. Hot and sunny. Blazing, blistering, fiery sunny and hot. But, as they say in the Canadian prairies, it's a dry heat.

The person who sells me my Dinosite Tour ticket points out the guidelines for walking in the Badlands in the height of summer. Hat, sunscreen, proper footwear, water, bug spray, etc., etc. I key in on the "age 4 & up" criteria and decide it can't be that much of a hardship. When I join the tour group outside, our guide is reiterating the guidelines. Hat, sunscreen, proper footwear, blah, blah, blah. I have about five minutes before the tour starts so I zoom back to my car in the parking lot to empty out and repack a backpack with the requisite Dinosite Tour hat, sunscreen, water, etc. It's strange to think that just a few days ago I was standing behind my car shivering in the freezing rain at the foot of the Athabasca Glacier changing into warmer, dryer, bulkier clothes. Yet, here I am today, sweating in the dry heat, spraying sunscreen on the tops of my bare shoulders and the parts of my feet that are not protected from the searing sun by my sandals and bandaids. Weird. 

The Dinosite tour is loads of fun! We learn how the badlands were formed and why there are dinosaur fossils here. Our guide explains how palaeontologists know where to look for dinosaur fossils and we search for fossils ourselves. I find a rock with the imprint of wood millions of years old. Our guide shows us a partially excavated Hadrosaur.

Back at the museum I have lunch and walk through the entire museum. Looking back, I think I must have been overwhelmed because I take only one picture inside the museum, this Tyrannosaurus rex. I highly recommend a visit to Drumheller and the museum for anyone who's the least bit interested in fossils, dinosaurs or geology.

By 4:00 pm I'm tired and my feet hurt. It's been a fun day but now I have to leave because I have no place to stay in Drumheller and unless I backtrack to Red Deer or Calgary, I have a lot of driving to do before I can sleep.

After a quick stop at Drumheller's grocery store for ice and on-the-road snacks, I drive south and pass the sign for the Last Chance Saloon one last time. I take 56 to the Trans-Canada and aim east for Saskatchewan. Supper and gasoline in Medicine Hat. It's 10 pm, just after dark, and my car's trip odometer reads 3752 km when I pull in to the Swift Current Travelodge ($82.43). Sleep.

Day 11 - July 26. Drumheller.

It's been awhile since I've written about my solo 2007 Road Trip adventure from the west coast of BC to Ontario and back. To find the previous posts click here.

Calgary. Before we head out for breakfast my brother-in-law convinces me to reserve a room in Drumheller ahead of time instead of looking for one after I get there. After some quick searching around on the Internet and a couple of phone calls I book myself the last available room in the Drumheller Travelodge.

I join the mad rush of truck and car traffic going north on Hwy 2 out of Calgary and wonder if Albertans are aware just how suicidal their freeway driving is. After taking the Hwy 9 exit east I'm able to turn up the music and relax. Pretty soon the traffic peters out to local farmers in pickup trucks meandering along the highway with their eyes on the rolling fields.

Road construction slows me down. There's hardly any traffic but megabucks are being spent chewing through the prairie landscape to widen, level and straighten a highway that appears to exist solely to link up farms and a few tiny towns. Alberta obviously has plenty of money.

I get curious about a sign declaring a viewpoint at Horseshoe Canyon and take the turn-off. As far as I can tell from the highway, there's nothing but rolling prairie for as far as I can see. I put a hat on to ward off the hot mid-day sun and join a couple of other visiters at the edge of the parking lot. What a surprise! The land sheers off suddenly, dropping down to a distant river. Almost vertical cliffs, strongly striped with layer upon layer of rock and sandstone, form the walls of the canyon. A narrow river winds around more steep walls on isolated ridges and hills inside the canyon itself. So. This is The Badlands.

It's mid-day, the sun is much too high and I have a bad angle for taking good landscape pictures but I try anyway. A picture much better than any of mine is here.

The sign at the edge of the parking lot says:

Horseshoe Canyon, where the prairie landscape suddenly drops away, exposing millions of years of history before you.

68 million years ago the Rocky Mountains were beginning to rise and the shallow Bearspaw Sea lay to the east. Large rivers wound their way across the land, threading through ancient forests of cypress and dawn redwood. Along their journey, these rivers deposited sediment. Sands were left in the channels and fine silts and clays were dropped along the floodplains and in calm backwaters. Today, these layers of light-coloured sandstone and darker siltstone lie before you. In some areas of the valley they are separated by seams of coal remnants of once vast swamps.

Horseshoe Canyon and the Red Deer River Valley were carved out much later, 12 to 15 thousand years ago at the end of the last ice age. As the ice retreated, glacial meltwater was trapped in large lakes that emptied in torrents through shallow channels, eroding deep into the sedimentary layers laid down many millions of years before.

Leaving the canyon to continue on to Drumheller I remember to note down the mileage on my car's trip odometer. It's 2922 km.

My room at the motel isn't ready yet so I get back into my car and look at the local tourist map that I picked up earlier at the beer store. I plan to spend tomorrow at the Tyrrell Museum but there are lots of other interesting things within a short driving distance that I can go see today.

Hwy 10 south takes me past a sign for the Last Chance Saloon in Wayne. I briefly debate going there for a look but drive on by instead. "Shanghai Noon", a Jackie Chan movie, was filmed at the Last Chance Saloon. I end up driving past the Wayne turn-off a few times during my stay in Drumheller but never actually take that turn. I'm still curious about the place.

I watch for signs for The Hoodoos expecting another turn-off but suddenly, there they are, right beside the highway. It's too bad that they're so easily accessible. They have obviously suffered from the hands and feet of inumerable sightseerers. Signs ask people to stay on the marked trails, but there are hardly any recognizable marks and trails wind around everywhere. I do my best to be a responsible eco-tourist and resist touching the crumbling sandstone.

After The Hoodoos, I turn back northwest, pass The Last Chance Saloon sign again, drive through Drumheller and take 838, aka The North Dinosaur Trail. My plan is to follow the "trail" as it parallels the Red Deer River, cross the river at the ferry and then drive down the otherside of the river on 837, aka the South Dinosaur Trail, back to Drumheller.

I stop at Horse Thief Canyon for more fabulous views of the badlands and then catch the Bleriot Ferry. This is another tiny cable ferry with room for maybe six vehicles. Signs instruct you to ring the bell for service. After I cross I park the car so that I can take pictures of the ferry and see a small group with large inflatables just starting their float down the river. It's a hot sunny day and seeing them in the river gives me a sudden yearning for a cold drink and some cool water to soak my feet in.

Next stop is the Orkney Viewpoint with a magnificent panorama of the Red Deer River Valley.

The Drumheller Travelodge seems dated and just a little shabby for the price ($131.99), especially when compared to Gary and Sam's palatial digs in Calgary but the air conditioning works and my room is clean, comfortable and private. I put my beer in the fridge, close the curtains against the blinding glare of the setting sun, turn on the TV and read my newspapers and a book.

Dinner is a plate of Chinese-style stirfry. The restaurant is a typical example of those small-town restaurants with mismatched chairs and a menu that ranges from eggs and endless coffee to burgers and fries to take-out Chinese. All the locals eat there but you never see any tourists. Walking back to my car, I see a couple (they're dressed like city people in shorts and light-coloured t-shirts) hunkered over a PC in the front window of a corner store, obviously searching motel listings. I silently thank my brother-in-law for convincing me to phone ahead.

Day 10 - July 25. Odometer reading: 2490 km.

More high speed driving on Highway 2 south from Edmonton gets me to Calgary in just a few hours. As I pass the sign for the Drumheller exit, I try to imagine what the dinosaur bone beds look like. If all goes as planned, I'll find out tomorrow.

I haven't been in Calgary for several years and the city seems dramatically changed. It's surrounded in all directions by miles and miles of new subdivisions filled with houses all looking almost identical to me, each with its small patch of green landscaped lawn, driveway, two-car garage and bland beige or tan or taupe colour scheme.

In Calgary, I stay with The Big Guy's brother Gary and his wife Sam. They live in the north-west sector of Calgary and have a view of downtown Calgary from their beautifully landscaped backyard.

Sam is recovering from a broken hip and is trying to decide whether to go back to work or to retire early. She's an energetic sort of person, always busy and on the go, and now that she's back on her feet and getting around with a cane, the broken hip doesn't seem to have slowed her down much. I wonder what she'll do with the extra time she'll have when she retires and is 100% mobile again.

We have dinner at the Outback Steakhouse and I treat myself to fine Alberta beef prime rib.

Days 8 and 9 - July 23-24. Edmonton.

It's finally time to leave the mountains and move on east. Leaving Jasper I spot more elk grazing by the highway. The elk (Wapiti) remind me a lot of dairy cows. They seem perfectly tame and docile, oblivious to the traffic and the camera-toting tourists just meters away. I feel guilty taking pictures, doing my small part to habituate them to people, making them more vulnerable. At least I don't get out of my car.

I'm a little disappointed that I haven't seen any of the other large animals that Jasper is famous for such as bears, wolves, moose, deer, bighorn sheep and mountain goats. It's yet another reason to come back someday.

As I leave the elk and pull back onto the highway, my car's trip odometer clicks over to 2114 kilometers.

Approaching the eastern edge of Jasper National Park, I find myself disconcerted at the behaviour of the Alberta drivers speeding and recklessly passing on the highway in the park. After several days of leisurely driving on small mountain highways in BC and then in the national parks it takes me an hour or two to rehabituate myself to non-park freeway driving.

My first stop in Edmonton is the West Edmonton Mall. I need to find a shoe repair shop to get the strap on my handbag stitched up. The shoe repair guy says it will take about 30 minutes and urges me to go do some shopping but my feet are sore and I just sit on the nearest bench, tired.

I spend two nights in Edmonton with Brian and Mary Lou. Brian is an old friend of mine from when we both went to Western and after that when we worked for Digital Equipment. We go for a walk in their neighbourhood which borders on a beautiful green belt overlooking the North Saskatchewan River. And we have a grand time eating good food, sampling fine liquors and reacquainting ourselves with each other. Brian and Mary Lou are great hosts, I even have a chance to wash my clothes.

Day 7 - July 22. Jasper.

My car's trip odometer reads 1893 kilometers (1176.5 miles) and it's the 7th day of my road trip. The blisters on my feet are getting bothersome and I decide that, even though it looks like it's going to be a warm and sunny day, I better not wear my sandals again. I put on my All-Stars runners instead. (Later in the day, this turns out to be a highly fortunate decision.)

While I'm driving down the main street of the town of Jasper looking for the drugstore (I need more bandaids for my blisters) my cell phone chirrups and it's my sister wondering where I am and what I'm doing. I realize that maybe I should call up the rest of my family. Seems I've been a bit out of touch, although I do say, in my own defence, that I did leave a couple of messages and send a few emails two or three days ago. When I talk to The Big Guy he points out that if I continue heading eastward at this rate I won't reach Ontario until Christmas.

I check my Rand McNally Road Atlas for the mileage between Vancouver and Jasper. It's 506 miles. I've driven 1176 miles in six days and I'm just barely east of the BC/Alberta border. Maybe I can pick up the pace a bit across the Prairies.

But not today. Today I'm going to go see the Athabasca Glacier at the Columbia Icefield! It's only about an hour's drive south on Hwy 93, "The Icefields Parkway".

As I drive south, it clouds over. The temperature drops. There are sprinkles of rain. By the time I get to the Icefield Interpretative Centre's parking lot a cold wind off the glacier is blowing freezing rain and it looks like winter is setting in. What was I thinking when I got dressed this morning? I'm wearing clothes best suited for the height of summer and my suitcase with all the clothes I thought I would need for this road trip is at the hostel.

But of course not everything I brought actually fit into my suitcase so there are more clothes in my car. I hide, shivering, behind the open trunk lid of my car and put more stuff on: socks, long pants over my shorts, a hooded sweater over top of my sleeveless top, a jacket, a hat. I put my camera into a ziploc baggie, grab my umbrella and I'm ready for my glacier experience!

My Glacier Experience ticket gets me a ride on a shuttle bus from the Interpretive Centre to where we transfer to an Ice Explorer. This is a sort of super bus designed specifically for the trip up to and on the glacier. The route travels on top of one of the lateral moraines, down the very steep side of the moraine and onto the glacier itself. Then everyone brave enough to face the wind and sleet and the icy surface gets off the Ice Explorer and tries to take pictures while remaining upright on the slick ice in the howling wind. Fun!

This picture of an Ice Explorer on a sunny day was obviously not taken by me. My pictures show what the weather is actually like most of the time on the glacier.

This webpage has an excellent article with good maps and pictures about the Columbia Icefield and its glaciers.

 

Interesting things I learned:

See this website for lots more information and pictures on glacial features.

• The place on the Athabasca Glacier where the Ice Explorer turns around advances 25 meters/year (80 ft). They have to reconstruct the ice road and the turnaround on the glacier every year because of the movement.
• While its surface at the terminus moves 15 meters/year (50 ft), the glacier is still retreating 5 meters/year (16 ft), probably because of global warming.
• The parking lot where I put on more clothing is actually between the glacier's current terminus and its terminal moraine and the area where the highway and the parking lot is now was covered by ice in the 1840s. My guess is that this terminal moraine is around two kilometers from the current terminus.
• The Athabasca is one of several glaciers that flow out in all directions from the Columbia Icefield. It's meltwaters flow 4000 kilometers into the Arctic Ocean.
• The Snow Dome (3451 meters) at the top of the Icefield is the hydrographic apex of North America (triple divide.) Its meltwaters flow into the Arctic, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
• The Columbia Icefield's average snowfall is 7 meters (23 ft) per year and the greatest depth is 365 meters (1200 ft).
• All-Stars' rubber soles don't grip very well on wet ice.

Day 6 - July 21. Lake Louise.

I slept well but woke up late and very stiff and sore, probably due to the amount of time I had spent on my feet in the last two days. My dorm roomates had left before dawn. With the dorm and ensuite bathroom to myself, I took advantage of the unexpected privacy to do my entire stretching routine, except for the swiss ball back stretch (ball was too big to bring along on my road trip.) I felt marginally better.

The weather had turned cloudy and rainy overnight. Gloomy. I looked at the clouds trying to decide whether or not they would eventually lift high enough to make it worth while hanging around to visit the Chateau Lake Louise. I decided to wait, at most two hours. If the clouds hadn't lifted by then I would skip the Chateau and drive on north to Jasper.

By now it was too late for breakfast in the hostel's cafe so after packing up my stuff I got into the car and drove a few hundred meters to the nearest place that looked like it might have food and coffee.

There's nothing around Lake Louise that you could call a town or even a decent village. There's the intersection of Hwy 1 and 1A where there are two gas stations, a strip mall, an old CPR train station converted into a fine dining restaurant (not open for breakfast), some nearby camping and RV facilities, the hostel I had just left, and not much else.

I went to the strip mall. It was jammed with soggy tourists looking for somewhere dry to spend the morning. I elbowed my way into a coffee bar, got an extra-large coffee with milk and a breakfast sandwich and elbowed my way back outside again to sit on some benches under the shelter of the strip mall roof's overhang. It rained solid for about an hour while I lingered over the coffee. Most of the tourists left. I watched the rain slowly diminish to showers, then a drizzle and then the clouds lifted and the day began to brighten up.

Hurrah!

Into the car I hopped and up the hill I drove to the Chateau Lake Louise.

Another fabulous bright green lake! And mountains! And a glacier over on the other side of the lake! And the Chateau!

 

Lake Louise, like most other lakes in the Rockies, is fed by glacial melt water and the green colour of the lake is caused by the fine particles of "rock flour" suspended in the water and reflecting the blue-green part of the light spectrum. Glacial lakes can vary in colour from milky white to green to turquoise to blue depending on the lighting conditions and density and size of the rock flour particles.

 

The clouds continued to break up and it was beginning to look like a really nice day. I had a few tourist brochures in my car and read about the Lake Louise Sightseeing Gondola over on the other side of Hwy 1. This sounded like another place with a great view. I drove over, bought a combo lunch/lift ride ticket, had a late lunch in the lodge at the base of the lift and then rode the chair up. In the winter, this is a quad chair lift that takes you part way up the Lake Louise Mountain Resort ski area.

 

Wow!

The 180 degree panoramic view was absolutely fabulous! You can clearly see Lake Louise, Mount Victoria (3464 meters) and the Victoria Glacier plus lots and lots of mountain peaks. At the Wildlife Interpretive Centre (in winter, the Whitehorn Lodge) I sat in on an informative talk by a geologist about the formation of the Rocky Mountains.

 

The day was wearing on and I wanted to get to the hostel in Jasper before dark so I finally took the lift back down and drove north on Hwy 93, "The Icefields Parkway". More glaciers, rocks, mountains, rivers... I saw my first large-sized Rocky Mountain wildlife, elk, grazing beside the road.

The HI-Jasper ($25.80 per night) is an old-school hostel, a little older and more rustic than the HI hostels in Lake Louise and Banff but I did find it comfortable. It does have some smaller rooms but the women's dorm where I was had beds for 30 and it was completely full both nights I stayed there. The women's washroom is downstairs, down the hall. Lights are turned out at 11pm and back on at 8am.

By this time on my road trip I was accustomed to rummaging around in my luggage and reading books by flashlight so the lights-out policy was no problem. I was too exhausted to read much. After a page or two I just slept.

Day 5 - July 20 (continued).

Right from when I first started thinking about this road trip last year, Field had been on my mind as one of the must-go-to destinations. I had originally wanted to go see the Burgess Shale on Wapta Mountain, one of the most important fossil sites in the world with a wonderfully preserved trove of Cambrian-age fossils 515 million years old. But by the time I actually set out on my road trip I had abandoned the idea of reaching the actual fossil site as beyond my capabilites. It's a 20 kilometer moderately difficult mountain hike, 5 hours up and 5 hours back down, recommended only for the "physically fit and well prepared", which pretty much eliminates me. So I settled for hanging around the visitor centre in Field and taking pictures of the site from the shores of Emerald Lake. Another visitor loaned me her binoculars and between the two of us we decided which barely visible ridge on the mountain face must be the fossil quarry.

The visitor's centre in Field had very few visitors while I was there. A major car crash on the highway near Golden had closed the TransCanada Highway for most of the day leaving Field unusually quiet. The bored visitor centre staff competed with each other to answer my questions and make suggestions about local sights worth seeing.

Two high mountains, very different in appearance, rise directly behind Field. Mt. Stephen (3199 meters) is part of the Rockies' eastern main ranges and Mt. Dennis (2539 meters) is part of the Rockies' western main ranges. Mt. Stephen was formed of deposits layered in shallow water on the continental shelf and is a high prominent mountain with steep vertical cliffs showing colourful horizontal layers of hard limestone/dolomite and softer shale. Mt. Dennis was formed of deep water deposits and is made up of soft shales that have been squeezed and folded and then eroded more evenly. It is lower and darker with a pyramid-like shape.

There are plenty of scenic places to visit near Field. I spent most of the day in Field itself, at the Kicking Horse Pass where the Spiral Tunnels are, at Emerald Lake and at Takakkaw Falls. Lots of photo opportunities everywhere! If I visit this area again sometime, I think I would like to stay at the Fireweed Hostel right here in the middle of Field.

Back at Lake Louise, The HI-Lake Louise Alpine Centre ($37.40) is another fabulous hostel on par with the one in Banff. Supper was a burger and beer in their pub, Bill Peyto's. I slept in a 5-bed coed dorm room. The other occupants came in very late, went immediately to sleep and then left very early the next morning so I barely had a chance to say hello and goodbye.

All in all this was a fabulous day. I drove around in the mountains and over the continental divide. I got to look at real fossils, even if they were under glass in a visitor centre instead of out in the open air. I walked along the shore of one of the most beautiful brilliant green lakes I have ever seen. I got wet by wandering too close to the base of a magnificent 381 meter (1250 ft) waterfall. And then I stayed in a first class hostel.