Canada – exitthecube.com

Back in the US of A

After being in Canada for over two weeks, many of those days being rainy days, we were ready to get back to the US of A. Before we left Canada we were able to meet up with another Canadian friend we met on the 2011 Tour de France trip who we have kept in touch with. He was on his way to an awesome backpacking trip in British Columbia so we met up in Banff which was great. On our way out of Canada we stopped for an overnight in Claresholm, Alberta at a campground that was different from any that we have seen so far. This one was run by the small town itself. It is in a town park with grassy areas. They had flush toilets and showers. Great deal, a site with no hookups only $15 CAD which is about $11.70 USD. .

Campground in the background at Centennial Park in Claresholm, Alberta

We wanted to get to a US Interstate to make some time so we entered the US at the Port of Sweet Grass, Montana which dumps you out on I-15 south toward Great Falls, Montana with nothing in between. Once in Great Falls we found there is not much happening there besides Lewis and Clark. They came through the area back in 1805 and there is now a Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center there which tells the story of their expedition. It was interesting to us but a guy at the grocery store who grew up here said he heard about it all the time, so he has had it with Lewis and Clark. Walking and observing downtown Great Falls, it seems to be in a declining state, buildings are empty and we also walked by a guy trying steal a bicycle by cutting the cable so that left us with a bad impression. On the flip side they had a really nice walking path along the Missouri River and there was a beer festival going on which was really cool except the price was too steep for us, $25 per person for two tastings, and then you pay more for additional tastings and there was only one hour left when we got there so we declined. Several Montana breweries were represented and there was some live music.

Empty building on Main Street in Great Falls

Path along the Missouri River in Great Falls

Once we were back in the US, it hit us, we can go anywhere we want to. And what the heck are we doing in Montana anyway? Eastern Montana is endless prairie and there is actually a heat wave going on and temps are in the 90s, which is not good sleeping in a van weather. When we thought about it, we had spent 20 nights in Montana both before and after Canada. How did this happen? This was not in any plan. Where should we go now? How are we going to get out of this hot zone? Montana is huge! It is the fourth largest state in the nation. We had no idea!

We still had our Out-of-State Resident Pass for the Montana State Parks that we bought at Big Arm on Flathead Lake several weeks ago so we decided to use it one more time at Lost Creek State Park near Anaconda. It was very quiet there and they have some nice waterfalls and a hiking trail and it was a bit cooler than the city. Then on to Bozeman, Montana. Found a great place, Suds ‘n Duds, where you can do your laundry, wash your RV and wash your dog all in one place. No dog, but we were able to use the other services. Seems like a much nicer town than Great Falls but we did not spend much time there because it was too hot!

Lost Creek State Park, Anaconda, Montana

RV Wash at Suds n Duds, Bozeman

Laundromat at Suds n Duds, Bozeman

There is a heat wave going on across the plains and temperatures are high. The Black Hills of South Dakota looks like a small pocket of cooler weather so that is our next destination. On the way out of Montana we stop at the Little Bighorn Battlefield which Tim is much more interested in than I am. History was never my strong suit. But of course when you go to the actual place where something happened it gets a bit more interesting. It is a national monument so we were able to use our national parks annual pass to get in for free, normally a $20 entrance fee. There were quite a few people there. I am seeing a trend at the national parks where Native Americans are being represented more, sharing their culture and heritage and getting recognition for their accomplishments. I especially liked this quote on the wall here from Crazy Horse: “We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. We do not want your civilization!”

I liked this quote from Crazy Horse

Also of note is a rest area in Wright, Wyoming. They had a free dump station which we used, a little pond with a walkway, and a HORSE exercise area!

Walking Path at Rest Area

Horse Exercise Area at Rest Stop

Banff and Jasper

Lots of rain in Banff. Day after day of rain. And lots of rainbows.

One memorable thing about Banff is that I was able to get my hair colored and cut. I let it go quite a bit longer than my normal 5 weeks, so I was anxious to get it done. Back home I had the same hairdresser for years. Over the years she had dialed in the correct color for my hair. When we were planning on hitting the road indefinitely I asked her how I could keep my hair looking good while we are on the road. She had some experience with this situation because many of her clients are snow birds and spend their summers elsewhere. She was nice enough to write down the formula that she uses to color my hair, brand name, numbers and amounts. Since the brand was Redken, I went to the Redken website and they have a salon finder where you can search locations and what services are offered there. As much as I think it is strange to have a town in the middle of a national park, I was happy to find some salons right in Banff listed on the Redken site. One website even said they use Redken color so I picked that one, The Albion Room. I was sure to make an appointment a couple days ahead of time. Everything worked out great. The girl said she can just follow the same formula, no problem. Looked good and then she gave me a great cut as well. As time is going by, I start wondering to myself, how much is this going to cost me? To add to my great experience it turned out to be much less than when I get my hair done in Scottsdale. I was shocked!

On the topic of the town in the middle of the National Park, a guy at the hair salon said they do have lots of building restrictions in Banff because they are in the national park. More interestingly, he said to live in Banff you have to work in Banff, so this limits the number of people living here. The locals also had no idea why it has been raining every day in July, it is very unusual!

For those of you that have told us how beautiful Lake Louise is and that we just have to go there, this is what I saw…

And as far as the Icefields Parkway, one of the most beautiful drives in the world, here is what it looked like to me…

I guess it could have been worse, at least we were not on bikes, like these people…

Jasper National Park which is north of Banff is forecasted to have better weather so we head that way hoping for some relief from the rain. With our “no reservation policy” we stop at each first-come first- serve campground along the way on the Icefields Parkway but there are no sites available at any of them. When we get closer to the town of Jasper the reservable campgrounds all have signs saying “FULL”. We get to the Whistlers campground which is very close to town of Jasper and has 781 sites, surely they must have something for us. No sites available there, however they will gladly take our $15 if we want to go park out in a field with an outhouse 21 km up the road. Desperate at this point, we take it. When we first get there it is not too bad, not that many people, outhouses are clean enough. As the hours go by more and more RVs show up, things start getting crowded. One good thing is there are no fires allowed in the field. By 6:00 am the next morning the outhouse stinks and I am chomping at the bit to get the heck out of there. I had visions of the hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans in the Superdome. I just can’t believe that there are so many people camping in Jasper that they have to push hundreds out to this “overflow” area. We show up back at Whistlers Campground before 9:00 am the next morning and get a site for the next two nights. I feel much better at a “real” campground.

The Canadian camping tourists are expert fire builders. It seems they can get a roaring fire going at will, any time of day, any weather, rain or not. Time for a meal, time for a roaring fire. There are huge wood piles in the campground. If you want a fire, you have to pay extra, around $8 / night, but you can then drive over to the huge wood pile, which has been in the mud as far as I have seen, soaking the rain, and get as much wood as you can put in your truck, bring it back to your site and burn it until 11:00 PM at night. There is an 11:00 PM curfew for fires and alcohol.

As for the weather situation, it has not improved. More rain in Jasper. Outside the Jasper Brewery they had this sign: Rain rain go away, come and have a drink today. We did just that.

Thinking the weather was clearing we head out to check out Maligne Canyon and Maligne Lake. There are supposed to be some trails out there. Walking around the canyon, seeing the waterfalls, it is raining like crazy and of course everything is very muddy. Well that just wore us down. We never made it to the lake and headed back to the brewery to console ourselves.

A couple bright stars in Jasper:

Since it is a functioning town, people do live here. We walked by this community garden. I am assuming each person has their own space they take care of. They were growing lots of lettuces, chard, kale. It all looked great.

On the way out of Jasper we finally saw some mountain goats up close, right next to the highway. We have been looking for them since Glacier National Park and have only seen one very far away until now!

Calgary and Banff

After being without internet for weeks at our campgrounds in Glacier, Waterton and Dinosaur Park we were yearning for some city services. We headed for Calgary which is the biggest town around here. It is kind of hard to camp in a city so the thought of staying at a hotel with wifi and unlimited showers was very appealing. When you see the Canadian prices, things seem quite expensive compared to what we are used to in Phoenix. However, you have to take into account the conversion rate which is in our favor at the moment, you can get $1 CAD for $.77 USD. So a hotel for $200 CAD is really about $154 USD, not as bad. Unbeknownst to us, the Calgary Stampede was going on, which is a big deal in these parts, so I am sure that raised the hotel rates as well. The Calgary Stampede, also known as the “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth” is a 10 day event featuring a huge rodeo, parade, concerts and exhibitions. In the end Tim got us a deal by the airport for $107 USD, but that is equal to about 5 nights in a campground! It sure was nice to have some indoor luxuries. When we are in the city we long for the calmness of the wilderness and when we are in the wilderness we long for the availability of services in the city.

While in Calgary we were able to get together with a friend that we met on our Tour de France trip back in 2011 and his wife who live in the area. It was great to get a glimpse into their lives here and to share our crazy van life with them. Another highlight in Calgary was the Calgary Farmers Market. Lots of fresh produce and natural products. A lot of the produce we saw was grown in British Columbia, not too far away. There were lots of delicious berries – blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, yum!

Moving west from Calgary toward Banff we have a quick overnight stay at a provincial park campground near the highway. Very few campers there. The next day we head to Banff. This part of the trip was planned back in January when we knew nothing about van life. We heard Banff was really crowded so we made the camping reservations for a random week in July and now it just so happens rain is forcasted all week here. We do have flush toilets and showers in our campground and there is local transit into the town of Banff. Like Waterton there is a town in the middle of the National Park. It seems strange to us with our experience of US National parks which are more rustic, less commercialized. Here in Banff they are trying to sell something at every turn like hotels and tours. The park service employees are working side by side with the commercial employees. The availability of restaurants is not good for our eating-out addiction!

Our first full day in Banff we were lucky and had very little rain. We left our campground on foot following the Hoo Doo – Bow Falls trail along the river down toward town. We did not bring the bear spray and there were some sections where there were no people so I started getting nervous about bears! Especially since we saw a carcass that had been picked clean, may have been a deer, on another trail near our campground the night before. We also hiked Tunnel Mountain Summit which is a short steep trail that starts in town. The trails are integrated into the town, not what I expected, although I am sure there are many trails in the backcountry as well. At the top of Tunnel Mountain we found the red chairs. Canadian National Parks have these red chairs placed in special locations to encourage visitors to stop and take in the view.

Carcass near our campground

Bow River

Trail sign in town

Tunnel Mountain Summit trail

Tunnel Mountain Summit

Easing Into Canada

We had mixed information about what we could or could not bring into Canada. From what we read it seems like they can change the rules at any time depending on current issues. I was most concerned about food, fresh fruits and vegetables to be specific. I didn’t want to buy a lot of food just to have it confiscated at the border. So we were very light on fresh produce at the border and as it turned out, it didn’t take us long to get across. We had to show our passports of course and the guy just asked us about alcohol, fire arms and weapons. We told him about our 5 cans of Montana beer and our one can of bear spray and he sent us on our way.

There is a Canadian National Park, Waterton Lakes, which is right over the border from Glacier National Park. This is an easy place for us to stop that does not require a lot of driving so we decide to check it out. Since we are planning on going to other Canadian National Parks we decide to get the Discovery Pass, which gets you into all Canadian National Parks for two years. Normally it is for one year, however as part of the 150^th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation in 2017, they are extended the pass for two years. The pricing structure in the Canadian National Parks is different than the US Parks. If you do not have an annual pass there is a fee that is charged DAILY. In the U.S. the entrance fee is good for an entire week. It was more cost effective for us to get the Canadian annual pass.

We head for the first come first serve campground at Waterton which is Crandell Mountain Campground, and we had no problem getting a site. Something else that seems different at the Canadian park is there is a town right in the park, the town of Waterton. It is kind of nice because there are services available, restaurants and laundromat, however there is only one store with groceries which was fairly limited on fresh fruits and vegetables but we were able to get strawberries, bananas and potatoes but had to go with frozen green beans. The deer like to hang out in town here. We saw them sitting on lawns just like a dog would. They must know they are safe here. We even saw a mom with her two fawns, so cute.

Deer sitting in someone’s yard in Waterton

The highlight at Waterton was definitely seeing a bear crossing the road right in our campground! We were driving on our way out of camp to head into town. From what we learned at Glacier, I believe he/she was a black bear that was blond in color. Black bears can be any color and grizzly bears can be any color.

We hiked up the hill called Bear’s Hump to get a view of the town of Waterton and the lake below.

We also went to the evening program at our campground which was about cougars. This one was actually inside a structure whereas the campground evening programs we have been to in the US were always outside. The Canadian interpreters are young adults and the programs are very kid/family oriented. In the US, the interpretive rangers we met were older people with years of experience in the parks.

Turned off by the rainy forecast in the Canadian Rockies we decide to head for the Canadian Badlands of south eastern Alberta. The landscape is barren and exposed and the sun should be shining, more of what we are used to from our desert dwelling past. On our way out there we see endless fields of bright yellow flowers. A quick internet search determines they are growing canola on the prairies here east of Calgary.

When I hear the term “badlands” I just think of South Dakota because they have the Badlands National Park. This prompts the question, what does “badlands” even mean? At the Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks, Alberta they think the term badlands came from the early explorers because it was hard land to cross with no water or animals. Dinosaur Provincial Park is a hotbed for dinosaur fossils. The park is also very family oriented with a play area for the kids in the campground. Tourists are only allowed to go on certain interpretive trails unescorted and you have to pay for escorted tours if you want to go elsewhere in the preserve. This may be about protecting the fossils.