BEWARE: Really long post. To bring you up to date, we've gone from Seattle to Vancouver, to Jasper, to Lake Louise and tonight, to Fernie. All in 5 days. Just about 2,000km. As we haven't had internet access for a few days, there's a lot to catch up on. These are just a few posts that I wrote up on the road, I'll do a bit more tomorrow. The moral of the story is, we're in Fernie, we have our dream condo, and all is good. Sitting on our new couch drinking an icy cold Bud. More posts and photos to come. Lots of Fernie love, T and Z.


BACK IN CANADA

With Crystal’s brakes fixed we were all set to leave Marysville, Washington State, and start our road trip to the Rockies. We readied ourselves for another probing (bad choice of words) at the US-Canada border. We already had some beers but we needed some hard liquor. And at as little as $15 for a 750mL bottle of Smirnoff who could say no? Obviously we would have liked to stock up to the max, but the border crossing limits were very specific; only 1.14L per person. This limited us somewhat. So we joined forces and bought a good line-up of vodka, gin, white rum, spiced rum and two types of bourbon. (And mum you’ll be happy to know we haven’t drunk it all. Yet..) But what about the beers? They would surely cut into our beverage allowance... Robyn and I therefore graciously took it upon ourselves to deal with the problem. Such selfless people that we are.

We then got up to the Canadian border, (Robyn and I a little bit giggly) with a wait time of two minutes as opposed to the two hours coming through the other way. We steeled ourselves for a barrage of questions and accusations.... and were waved through, basically welcomed with open arms! They didn’t even check the alcohol! Well, there was a stern customs officer, but he was Canadian, which is different to stern Americans. We softened ours up and in no time, he was giving us tips on the most scenic route to get to Fernie.

Ah back in Canada. If I knew the Canadian national anthem I would sing it. I love the different coloured maple leaves, floating to the ground. I love the reasonably portioned meals (in America we were still stuffed if we only ordered half sizes). I love the way people say “eh” a lot. But really, America was great. Sure we didn’t see much, just popped into Marysville for a few days, but everyone was super friendly and Walmart is great.

So on the Thursday we stayed just out of Vancouver and on Friday we drove through Squamish (or in the native language Sḵwxwú7mesh. And yes, that 7 IS meant to be there). We checked out the Shannon Falls which were really beautiful, there was a really nice walk you could do right up close to the falls. After Squamish we continued up to Whistler which was nice but it was such a miserable day that we didn’t stay very long. We had lunch and a little look around and then headed back on the road. Unfortunately the gondola was closed, probably due to weather, so we couldn’t ride up to the top which was a shame.

After Whistler we continued along and into cowboy country. That’s what it looked like to me, anyway. There were massive rolling green plains, the big mountains surrounding us, leftovers of old railway tracks, I could just imagine gun-toting, steed-riding pillagers riding through. We went through lots of pretty little one-street towns, and the whole way, massive lakes were snaking their way along through the mountains.

It was our plan to stay at Lillooet but upon our arrival we saw it was a very small town with limited places to stay and not much going on. Lillooet was beautiful, however, it was like a town all in a row, perched on the edge of a big canyon. We decided to carry on to the next town, which Adam said was a bit bigger. It was probably another hour in the car when we stumbled across Kamloops. I say stumbled across, and that is literally what happened. We were just cruising along and then BAM! out of nowhere, this massive town appeared! It had been hiding in the mountains and it had everything! Tim Horton’s, McDonalds, KFC, the sights were endless! We ended up staying at the Hospitality Inn and there was an Indian Restaurant next door. We shared butter chicken, lamb vindaloo and some rice and naan bread and it was so delicious.

After an early 7am wake-up and an abysmal Macca’s breakfast we hit the road again. The weather was so much better than the day before, clear, sunny skies. We couldn’t wait to see some sights. We came to Clearwater and drove to the nearby Helmcken Falls. The lady at the information booth said it was about an hour’s trip to get out there so we debated whether or not too do it, as we had a long slog to Jasper. We ended up going to see the sights and we made the trip round trip in just over an hour because we were hooning in good old Crystal. It was a good thing we made the trip as the falls were absolutely incredible. The crystal clear water was gushing down the falls into the pools 130m below. With the lush trees either side and the mist billowing off the falls, the sight was breathtaking.

We had a delicious lunch at the Clearwater bakery and cafe and then it was back on the road. Soon enough the mountains surrounding us began to have a dusting of snow on top and we knew we were getting closer. It was exciting just to see the snow-capped peaks jutting out from the clouds, as it’s been around 5 years since Zane or I have seen snow. There were even a few times that the light rain falling on the windshield looked particularly snow-like and Robyn and I got really excited but I think we may have been jumping the gun. There were sleety-like snow splodges, but nothing snowflake-y. Then, at 4:23pm Alberta time our first official flakes fell. It was so exciting, we wanted to do the official ‘first flakes’ celebration but as we were cruising down the highway at 110km per hour we couldn’t quite pull over to dance around and catch snowflakes on our eyelashes and tongue. So we all decided we’ll wait until we have nice big fat floaty flakes and dancing is appropriate. Plus, Adam prefers to dampen our first snow encounter, calling the precipitation “slein”, a cross between rain and sleet but whatever. Either way, Robyn and I will always remember our first snow(like) encounter.

We got into Jasper Friday night and it is such a beautiful town. Pretty little cobblestone and wooden houses, tree-lined streets, mountains in EVERY direction. We had a great dinner, splashed out and paid around $25 per main each, as opposed to the $5 per main each that we have become accustomed to. It was worth it though, Robyn and Adam had steak, Zane had barbecued ribs and I had grilled Mediterranean chicken. Yum.

So we had the most amazing day today. It didn’t start off too amazing though. Zane woke up at 7:30 and I woke up at 8:30 and we both must have thought, oh we’ll all wake up soon. We all woke up at 10:30. That is a late start. After showers and breakfast, we finally set off for our adventures at around midday. But we still managed to fit a lot in. We were going to do a climb up the Edith Cavalle Mountain but it closed yesterday! Fancy our luck. Oh well, plenty more to see and do. We were instructed by the nice information booth lady to check out Maligne {pronounced may-leen} Canyon and the surrounding lakes. The nice information booth lady also warned us that it was bear season and a few had been spotted recently in nearby areas.

Segue: For a few weeks I’ve been doing this blog and I’ve really been enjoying it, I find it quite therapeutic and it’s a great way to chronicle experiences and thoughts that might otherwise be forgotten. So I’ve gotten into the habit of incorporating the word ‘blog’ into my daily vernacular. This isn’t good when you’re travelling with people like Zane and Adam, who have jumped on the fact that the word blog also rhymes with a word that colloquially means to defecate. You can imagine my conundrum. Here I am talking about seeing something exciting and looking forward to blogging, or discussing all the various showers we’ve encountered, different pressures and nozzle heights and whatnot and maybe making a shower blog... you can imagine how it quickly turns to ahem... toilet humour, and let me tell you – I like to blog a lot!.

Anyway we were talking about the possibility of seeing a bear. I was the only one blogscared of seeing one, the others were super keen to see a massive grizzly. Robyn said how it would be an experience worthy of blogging about, I said I’d probably blog myself right there and then (hey, if you can’t beat them...).

So off we went to the Maligne Canyon. It’s a steep-walled gorge of limestone bedrock. At the first bridge we crossed, the gorge went down 51m. It sure was an amazing sight. There was all this greenery growing either side of the gorge and if you really leaned over you could just see the water gushing down below. Scientists have worked out that during Winter, water takes 88 hours to run through the 16km underground caves and tunnels, however, during the summer months, when run-off is the highest, the water only takes 12 hours.

The Maligne canyon meets up with the maligne river which then runs through Medicine lake, through to Maligne Lake. Medicine lake was the next stop and it was an action-packed area. We saw a mummy elk with its little babies and then about 10m down the road we saw a BEAR! A real grizzly! Just 10m away from the car, digging around in the dirt, so cool. I was a bit scared but it was just happy loping around. And then another couple of metres down the road we saw a mountain goat! And then another couple of metres down we saw a moose! Wildlife galore! It was like Winter Safari! Such an epic day.

The Maligne Lake is 97m deep and 22km long and it is surrounded by mountains and when we went there, there was snow all around the edge of the water. We crunched our way through, finding bear prints (perhaps) and making our own tracks. It truly was an amazing sight. The water was as still as glass and there was stillness to the air that is hard to describe. It was so serene, nothing to be heard, and the enormous mountains surrounding us. When we were in Vancouver, we just couldn’t believe how familiar it felt. It really seemed like we could’ve been anywhere. But today, nestled in those mountains, standing by that lake, there is nowhere else we could have been. Today, with the bear, the snow, the moose, the elk, the icicles glistening from pine fronds, we were in Canada.

Lots of Canadian love, T and Z.