Eight Days to Calgary

Ten years ago this very day, Cuppa and AC set off on a very long drive. We were heading off for a month-long trip from Sarnia to Calgary and beyond. These two fifty-plus bods did a lot of camping in a lot of places and had quite an adventure. I put my journal online back then before blogs existed, or at least several years before I knew they existed. Here are some excerpts from the part of the journal that covered the trip out. Perhaps I will eventually add other excerpts from the rest of the trip.

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In July 2000, we packed our little, old Corolla to the hilt and rode it mercilessly on a 30-day drive that took us more than 12 000 kilometres through several major geographic regions of Canada. We journeyed from the flat lands of southwestern Ontario, through the rugged Canadian Shield north of Lake Superior, across the gently rolling Prairie, to the majestic Rocky Mountains.

As the more youthful among you might say, "I totally loved this trip. It was like awesome!" Canada truly is an incredibly diverse and glorious land. I loved every part of the journey, but let me confess that The Rocky Mountains magnetized my spirit like a primal force field. Such was their appeal that I dreamt of them reverentially every single night from my first sighting until a month after we got back home.

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Here I sit, bug-swarmed and hot in the forests north of Lake Superior. It is 9:00 p.m., and I am now well-swaddled in clothing in order to minimize skin exposure to the teeming mosquitoes. We tried our best to wash and brush at an outdoor sink earlier, and we learned that we were easy prey for the hungry hordes. My few exposed, fleshly parts have now been liberally applicated with Deep Woods Off. So, maybe I will be able to write a little. There is also a citronella candle/pot burning about one foot from my head.

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I am sitting at a picnic table at Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park, about 30 km past Thunder Bay. It felt like we were still driving west when we passed Thunder Bay, but it’s probably more north of the city. It’s 10:00 p.m., but I still have enough light by which to see the mosquitoes that land on my bare arms. We are almost in the next time zone, so it is really closer to 9:00 or 9:30 sun time, 8 to 8:30 adjusting for daylight savings.

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In all we drove about 587 km today and about 1377 km in the past two. It seemed like a long way, but I’m not sure why as the scenery was fantastic for the most part. You would like to take a picture at every bend in the road, but since you’re on the Trans Canada Highway, it is almost impossible to take any at all. Stopping is too problematic.

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What a huge province and country! Behold, we have now driven just over 2000 km, and we only arrived in Manitoba, the next province, in the past hour and a half or so. We drove 726 km today and are now in Winnipeg.

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I guess you have to drive through Northern Ontario to appreciate the immensity and the isolation. Towns are so small and so far apart that there was a sign telling us that it was only 3 hours to Dryden. When we got there, it was a settlement of less than 8000 people.

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We resumed our westward trek, and past Brandon, the Trans Canada dwindled to two-lanes and stayed that way until the outskirts of Regina. The other thing that I should mention is the westward incline. For probably 80 to 90 percent of the time, the road grade inclines noticeably to the west. You notice this most when you look in the rear-view mirror, and you can see that the land slopes down behind you.

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The highlight of the day, I think for both of us, was a detour we made into the Qu’Appelle Valley. On a whim I followed a sign that told of a Scenic Qu’Appelle drive after 33 km. So, we took the path less travelled and, eventually, after some panic from Cuppa, who couldn’t find our road on the map, came upon the Qu’Appelle Valley. It was quite a sight to behold. Sometimes, it’s well worth leaving the beaten path.

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It is especially rolling, almost rugged, down here in the extreme southwest of Saskatchewan where we are now camping. We are at Cypress Hill Provincial Park, and the local area is, indeed, hilly. It is quite a nice park, with lots of amenities, such as a Subway restaurant where we had a late supper ... From Shaunavon, we followed "The Red Coat Trail" (#13) that the RCMP took westward from Gull Lake . Once again, the country was very rolling, but it was getting more desiccated. The road was a bit rough, and our little Corolla bottomed out a few times.

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Life isn’t perfect, and neither is today. I guess that riding the back roads last night was not the best of ideas. Afterward, the car started to become noisy. So, we drove it to Medicine Hat today and took it to Canadian Tire. We need a new front wheel bearing, which has to come from Calgary – tomorrow!!

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We were able to pick up the car and leave “The Hat” around 11:00 o’clock this morning, and we were in Calgary by about 3:00 p.m. Praise be! The car is running well, and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg to fix — just two fingers and one toe.

The land west of The Hat is really dry and quite treeless. It is mostly pasture land except where they irrigate, and they do quite a bit of that. The terrain continued to roll, even more so as we approached Calgary. It also started to green up. It was odd to see 5 small deer grazing by the side of the Trans Canada Highway in an environment devoid of trees. How did they get there and why?

The trip now totals 3597 kilometres, but we are only 2550 klicks from Sarnia if you can fly like a crow. We’ve come a long way in eight days, but they have been thoroughly enjoyable. It’s a marvellous land, this Canada of ours.

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Our Westward Ho

(2. Slept under the stars ... not quite ... part 3)

This is one reason why I don't do well with memes. This is the third post on the second point of one hundred on the list. Can you imagine me attempting the whole meme? All one is supposed to do is to make bold the items on the list that you have completed. But, oh no, I have to do it my way.

I was a geography who didn't get to travel much, but nine years ago, we took our tiny, old Corolla thousands of miles out west. It was to be a long vacation, so one had to mind one's expenses; therefore, we did a lot of camping. We camped on the Canadian Shield and on the Prairies on the way out, and we camped in the Rocky Mountains for about a week while we were out in Alberta.

I kept a journal and later, before the era of blogs, or at least before I knew about them, I turned my journal into my first website, Westward Ho, which, warts and all, is still online here. I didn't know what I was doing at the time, so it's not a great website, but what the heck, ite still works for the most part although better in Internet Explorer than Firefox.

I absolutely loved the trip, camping and all. In fact, camping was a large part of the experience. I'm almost a decade older now and am pretty sure that I wouldn't do it again, especially having a not-so-good experience since then, but it was super back then. It's rather amazing in a way when I contemplate it now, that a couple in their fifties would pack up an old little Corolla like we did and push it to the extreme, but we did it, and it was great.

Here is one entry cut and pasted from the website: nothing special, in fact badly written we a ton of "we dids" and "we wents" etc" — just what we did and saw on one particular day.

August 1: Camping at Lake Louise

I am sitting at the Lake Louise campgrounds on a gorgeous day: sunny with a few scattered clouds and a temperature of about 25°C. There is a breeze that actually makes it a little cool when a cloud passes over. The sun is also starting to dip behind the treetops and will soon force me to move from the picnic table to the very handy camp chair that Thesha gave me for Father’s Day. Before I make the monumental effort to move into the warmth, I must devote myself to finishing the humungous chocolate chip cook that Cuppa bought this morning at the Lake Louise Village.

.... I have now finished my cookie, moved into the sunshine, and it is still cool enough for me to pull on a sweatshirt. Except, as soon as I write that, the breeze dissipates, and I become a trifle warm. Regardless — back to the journal.

Since we had left the car packed for the most part after getting back to Althegal's place, we were able to get an early — for Anvilclouds — start. We were packed and in the car by 9:30. We made our usual Tim stop around Althegal’s corner and again in Canmore. We were in the line-up at Lake Louise campground by 12 noon. We had a bit of trouble pitching the tent because it took a while to pound tent pegs into the rocky ground, but everything was set by about 2:30.

With time on our hands, we decided to visit Yoho again. We found the Natural Bridge on the Kicking Horse River. It is simply a place where the torrent has pounded its way through the rock, but left and overhanging rock bridge (and semi-waterfall), and will, someday, become just a gorge or chasm.

Further up the winding road, we came to Emerald Lake, which is yet another gorgeous, turquoise, glacial-fed lake. We walked around a bit, took pictures and saw some wild lupines. There was a restaurant and tourist shop, but we managed to avoid buying anything. Through a telescope we were able to see the Burgess Shale in the distance. Many years ago a geologist discovered this important site where Cambrian fossils, about 500 million years old, were lifted high into the mountain peaks.

We made another pit stop at a teahouse/tourist store in Field. We had cookies outside by the river and mountains. We bought some postcards and proceeded back toward Lake Louise, determined to finally spot the Kicking Horse Pass lookout at the Continental Divide. We missed it — must be on a side road somewhere. Although we were unable to note the exact spot of the Divide, we did see that the river was flowing west; after a few more minutes driving east, we noticed that the river was also was flowing east.

Rather than return to camp, we ventured onward to Moraine Lake, which is about 20 km from Lake Louise. The road was winding and bumpy but scenic. We were right on the edge of the mountain on a number of occasions.

Moraine Lake turned out to be very blue rather than the familiar turquoise of mountain lakes because it, for the most part, does not originate from glacial meltwater. The blues kept shifting, depending on the directness of the sunlight. What with all of the shifting and all of the damnable tourists, it was difficult to get any decent photos, but we tried.

After shopping for a bit, we drove back to our campsite and made more sandwiches. Of course, we had cookies and fudge too and a tin of mandarin oranges, which tasted pretty fantastic.

I almost forgot a pretty significant event that we only witnessed on tape. While we were touring in the afternoon, Hans, our neighbour in the campsite to the north of ours, recorded some significant footage on his camcorder. We were astounded to peer into his viewfinder to see a huge elk grazing contentedly all around our tent. Hans is from St. Catharines, Ontario, has stayed here many times and has seen the elk several times. He says that he has been here during a snowstorm in August and also when the campground had to be evacuated because two bears were spotted lurking about. I hope I can miss the both the snow and the bear!