Texas to Alaska: Glacier NP, MT to Lake Louise- Banff National Park, Alberta to Dawson Creek, BC (Days 7 & 8)

Day 7 - June 6,2010
Total Mileage Today: 330
Total Trip Mileage: 2,860

Coldest morning yet. Had to start off with some gift shop coffee, then get packed and off to Canada!

Chief Mountain Scenic Byway:

Chief Mountain Port of Entry:

International border (this line that they cut through the trees to mark the border is probably visible on google earth, somebody should check):

We made it.

The route that I plotted took us through very rural areas of Alberta. Many stretches off 100 miles or so without any services. It looked strikingly similar to Colorado – range land with a back drop of the Rockies. Lot’s of cowboys and cattle up here. Corb Lund is from Alberta.

Anyways, we continued on into Banff National Park. The destination for tonight was Lake Louise, just north of the town of Banff.

A little note about Lake Louise… A couple of months ago Nikki and I were watching a discovery channel show called “Man-Eaters”, and it just so happened to be an episode about bear attacks. Not only bear attacks, but bear attacks at a certain (above mentioned) campground called Lake Louise. After the segment, Nikki asked, “ we aren’t going anywhere near there are we?” “Why as a matter of fact we are, see here look at our route.” I then reassured her that it was safe to go there because although they have a huge bear/camper issue, they have recently installed an electric fence around the entire campground to combat this. The information did not seem to comfort her.

Here’s the fence:

And what do you think we just happened to see right outside the fence?

First bear sighting of the trip, a Grizzly!
After the bear sighting excitement, we went for a ride to check out some of the lakes (glacier lakes maybe?). Here is what we found:

And on the way back down, a Porcupine!

Dinner then off to bed, while visions of brown bears danced in our heads…

Camp spot:

jordan

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Banff NP, Alberta to Dawson Creek, BC

Day 8 - June 7, 2010
Mileage Today - 483
Total Trip Mileage - 3,351

We awoke to the pitter-patter of rain falling on the tent fly. It's bad enough that every morning you have to stuff all of your living/sleeping quarters into a couple of small stuff sacks, but when it's raining, it makes it that much worse. The motivation is gone at that point, and you try to sleep some more so that maybe when you wake back up, the sun has come out and everything is dry. This hasn't happened for me ever, and today would be no exception. So we pack up everything in the rain, roll the tent up (wet) and hope that wherever we are camping tonight will be sunny and the tent will have time to dry back out before we have to get in.

Hiding out from the rain, having our Canadian (columbian roast) coffee:

The stretch of road between Banff and Jasper National Parks is known as "Ice Fields Parkway" or something similar to that. There are several glaciers that are viewable from the roadway during this stretch. Many have melted and retreated tremendously (argue amongst yourselves to determine reasons, i.e. global warming, smiting, friction). It was a truly beautiful ride, but it was also slightly miserable with a hint of numb extremities for good measure. Something about "Ice Fields Parkway" and 43 degrees does not mix well. At least it was raining and not snowing.

Ice Fields Parkway:

Bald Eagle:

Jazz hands (rain gear dish gloves):

After about 3 hours we were finally heading East and descending from the Rockies into the foothills where we would again turn North and head for Dawson Creek, British Columbia.

That would be our turn: