Glaciers...glaciers everywhere...

We got up today and when we looked out the window, there it was...the sun :-) We said goodbye to Golden after enjoying our stay there. The first part of Hwy 1 was the same as that we travelled yesterday when we visited Lake Louise. On the way, we made a side trip to Emerald Lake. At first we thought this was unexplored territory, but when we got there, we found it very familiar. And with reason, because we were here also 20 years ago with Ron and Tina. This time it didn't rain like the last time though. What a gorgeous lake this is. Look at our picture although it doesn't really do justice to the real scenery it does give you a glimpse of its beauty. On the way back to the highway, we stopped at the "Natural Bridge". This is where the Kicking Horse river has tunnelled through and under the rock formation here. It drops by at least 50ft or so and the resulting falls are spectacular. You're going to read this word "spectacular" or a synonym a lot since the Rockies here are just that in every way. The weather is also cooperating today, a fair bit of clouds, but also sun. This makes everything really stand out even more. About 15 minutes from Golden we saw our first wildlife, a group of bighorn sheep. They were just standing beside the road.

Near Lake Louise, we turned onto Hwy 93, also called the Glacier Highway. We had to stop at the park toll booth and were extorted $17 for the privilege to drive the Glacier Highway. Although it was hard to let go of the money, it proved to be well worth it. This road follows a valley, first along the Bow river and later on along the Athabasca River. On each side are fantastic mountain ranges topped with snow and glaciers. This has been our best day so far as far as scenery is concerned. The views are just magnificent, stupendous, spectacular, etc. Words are inadequate to describe the handiwork of God.

We saw a lot of wildlife along this route as well. We saw bighorn sheep by the dozens at various points. At other points we stopped and photographed a black bear, mule deer and elk. We stopped and enjoyed a few waterfalls as well. One of the main attractions that we re-visited were the Columbia Icefields. This is a massive ice field that has multiple glaciers like an octopus and feeds some of the largest western rivers, i.e. the Athabasca, Columbia and North Saskatchewan Rivers. We travelled to the foot of the Athabasca glacier, which is one of the largest of glaciers coming from the Columbia Icefields. After spending some time in the interpretive centre, we motored on to Jasper. We stopped for gas, a visit to the post office and the bank and then carried on to our final destination of today, Hinton. We soon checked into our motel and got ready to do our usual things such as going for supper, writing this blog and relaxing.

Upon reflection on the day's activities, I can't help but think of how God has created a perfect world for us. Too bad we have spoiled it in so many areas. How anyone can say that this wonderful natural world of ours has come together by chance must be daft. When you see how everything in the natural world works together in harmony and to think of the complexity of everything that is living, I cannot help but marvel at what God has created for us. To say that everything just came by chance, is incomprehensible to me. I would be more likely to find an Ipod and then say, look... I found this interesting artifact, I wonder how long it took to evolve from a single atom to this. Life, plant life as well as animal life, is many orders of magnitude more complex than anything we know about, including man-made (emphasis on made) objects. None of those can replicate themselves for one thing. Macro-biologists compare the complexity of a single cell to the complexity of our space station. I'm reminded of the saying "There are none so blind as those that see, but lack understanding". Anyway, here endeth my sermon.

I hope this blog has been interesting to all my readers. I sure have fun re-capping the day's events and observations by these means. Good night to all!

Golden is golden (at least to us)

Today is our rest day and we got up a little later than usual in spite of the 2 hours time difference. We did our laundry before setting off to church (OK, bite me). We decided to check out the local Alliance Church. Golden being a pretty small town and we didn't expect a large church. We were not disappointed, it turned out to be a pretty small church. We did feel at home though, the people were very friendly. The service was very casual and the pastor was also the lead guitarist of the worship team. The service was unusual in that they had a live video link with a large Youth Convention being held in Edmonton where the church's young people were. This proved to be very interesting. Miles McPherson, a pastor from a very large church in San Diego called the Rock Church and Academy was the speaker. We really enjoyed the service and Miles McPherson's message. After church we went back to our hotel and had lunch. The weather today started our overcast and on the cool side by the way.

After lunch we decided to drive to Lake Louise and stop whenever we saw an interesting spot along the way. Along the way we spotted two mountain goats just a bit off the highway. That was really cool because mountain goats are normally pretty shy creatures. As we crossed the mountain pass, the weather started to get a lot cooler again and it started to drizzle a bit. Nevertheless we continued on hoping to drive into better weather. We wanted to go to the Takakkaw Falls in Yoho National Park. Unfortunately, the access road was closed partway down. We did enjoy the scenery though up to that point. We got down to the Kicking Horse river and admired the wild mountain river. These rivers, and also the lakes that they feed, are a turquoise colour. This is caused by the silt that these rivers carry down from the mountains. There was a big mountain here called Mount Stephen (shown behind Omie). That of course reminded us of our oldest grandson and we just had to take a picture.

On we went to visit Lake Louise. We were here about 20 or so years ago with our good friends Ron and Tina and wanted to visit both Moraine Lake and Lake Louise again. We had no trouble finding both lakes but man was it cold and miserable today at those locations. By now the temperature had dropped to 5 deg C and a stiff wind was blowing off the mostly ice covered lakes. We didn't stay very long, just long enough to take a few pictures. Having seen these lakes in nice sunny weather makes such a difference. So we were a little disappointed but nevertheless glad we went.

On our way back, we stopped along Hwy 1 to look at an interest point where you could see the spiral tunnel. This is one of a number of spiral train tunnels that are carved into the mountains to allow trains to ascend or descend gradually. We happened to see a train come along to illustrate this. Unfortunately for us, the train was not very long. Long trains can be seen entering one tunnel and emerge from the tunnel before the last cars enter the tunnel. Anyway, here are two pictures of the same train. The one shows the last cars entering and the second shows the locomotive emerging. Click on the pictures to get a larger image to see it better. The tunnel describes about 288deg.

Also at this spot we met a couple of Dutch ladies who, with two more ladies, were vacationing in British Columbia. They were travelling with two motor homes. We had an interesting discussion with them. They were staying here for 4 weeks camping (brrrr) in the National Parks.

After we returned to Golden we were golden, the sun was again shining and the temperature back up to 15 deg C. We had a nice dinner and feel quite relaxed. That's about it again for now, "tot ziens luitjes" (see you soon folks).

This is an Alberta Spring????

I'm back again and it's Saturday evening when I write this. We thank God that He has brought us safely to Golden, BC today. We've seen a few vehicles in the ditch along Hwy 3. The reason for that was that is snowed all night in southern Alberta. We can hardly believe it. We woke up this morning after a fitful sleep and when we opened our hotel room curtains, there it was....SNOW! Well, the weather forecast predicted wet snow and rain for the day all over southern Alberta and BC so we thought we may as well push on to Golden, BC and hopefully drive out of this weather system.

After breakfast, we packed the Honda and cleared off the snow, all 3 inches of it and set off along Hwy 3. The roads in Taber were very much slush covered but once we got out of town, the road was just wet. The scenery was nothing to write about since the clouds were hanging so low you could almost touch them. Once we got past Lethbridge, the sleet turned to rain and we started to enjoy the scenery more. After stopping for a coffee in Pincher Creek, we started to leave the prairies behind us, we were definitely getting into the Rocky Mountain Foothills. It didn't take too long before we well into the mountains and crossed Crowsnest Pass. The scenery is getting absolutely gorgeous now, even though the mountain tops are hidden in the clouds. At one point we crossed the Kootenay river which is a major river flowing south to cross into the US and then back into British Columbia into Kootenay Lake and from there it flows into the Columbia river at Castlegar, BC.

We motored steadily on to Cranbrook where we stopped for lunch at the local Timmy's. By now the rain had stopped and the temperature had started to climb to a balmy 6 deg C. Note that it was 0 deg C when we left Taber this morning! We now turned onto Hwy 95N and continued on to our stop over for this weekend, Golden. The road follows the Columbia river valley basically. The Columbia flows north here and if you look at the map above, the Kootenay flows south, parallel to the Columbia. However, there is a mountain chain between them. The interesting point is that at Canal Flats, the Kootenay actually comes very close to the Columbia river (I told you, I'm a trivia nut). Because the two major rivers are so close together here, there used to be a portage where you could get from one river to the next if you were a voyageur.

By now the temperature has risen to 10 deg C, whoo hoo! We are really enjoying the sights of the mountains. Some have quite a bit of snow on their peaks yet. I'm guessing that the mountain ranges we see here are between 1500 and 3000m. Unfortunately, the BC government didn't think of putting signs up touting the natural beauty and provide information on points of interest here in BC. As far as that goes, the various states in the US are much more on the ball, posting signs that show elevations, mountain peak names, river names and other trivia. I'm having to do the BC government's work here tonight finding all this stuff on the Internet (are you feeling sorry for me yet?). This stretch of highway 95 follows the Valley of a Thousand Peaks in which the might Columbia river flows. The river begins in this valley which is a mix of lakes, marshes and river. On the west side of the valley are the Purcell Mountains and on the east is the Kootenay Range of mountains. The temperature kept going up and the sun showed it's face at times, things are really looking up. When we got to our hotel in Golden, it was a nice 16 deg C, cold snowy Taber was almost forgotten.

We have a very nice motel room here in Golden. The view from our room is gorgeous. We can see the Columbia river and mountains from our room (see picture). We decided to stay an extra day here in Golden tomorrow. We'll find a church to worship in, there is a Baptist, Lutheran and Alliance church here so we have some choice. Also, after travelling every day for almost a week, we need a bit of a break to relax and do laundry.

Well that about covers our travel adventures for today. Talk to you again tomorrow or Monday.

The prairies, second edition...brrrrr

Hello folks. Today is Friday and we're on our way for 5 days now. We got up this morning at what we thought was 7 o'clock. According to our trusty road map, the time wasn't going to change again until we crossed into Alberta. However, much to our surprise we were told at a tourist information place, before we crossed into Alberta, that Saskatchewan had switched over to Alberta time recently. So...in reality we got up at 6 o'clock. Anyway, it didn't make too much difference, except that we arrived at our destination today one hour sooner.

Unfortunately, our prediction vis-a-vis the weather, from yesterday proved to be true. We had heavy overcast all day with showers off and on. The temperature never got above 10 deg C. One benefit of the cold wet weather is that there are no bugs to splatter on our windshield. As a matter of fact, almost all the dead bugs have soaked off the Honda's grill and bumper as well.

What was unexpected, was that at one point we saw a bunch of SNOW laying in a depression along the road.

We came across an interesting hamlet, called Enfold, along the road. This hamlet was situated between the East and West bound lanes of Hwy 1. At this point the lanes were separated by about 500 yards. Just out of Regina we came across a potash mine/operation. The tailings were piled about 500ft high (150m). That was quite an impressive sight. Potash is an important ingredient for farm fertilizers (and terrorist bombs).

A little later, we decided to get off the highway to visit a typical rural prairie town. This one happened to be called Herbert. This reminded us of our late dear friend and brother-in-law Herb. I think he would have liked this town. The town seal included a tractor albeit it didn't depict a John Deere. I guesstimate the population to be somewhere around 500-750 people. There were at least 5 churches, a library, a curling rink, a Co-op, a school and a large number of small businesses. These small towns are almost totally self sufficient with the exception of medical services. We were quite impressed with how these towns manage to survive and serve their often large rural populations. Of course the railroad goes right through or along the towns. Each town has it's grain elevator to store and offload the farmers crops onto the trains to the west coast and Thunder Bay. All under the auspices of the Canadian Wheat Board.

The scenery is very flat from Winnipeg to Moose Jaw as I mentioned yesterday. However, from Moose Jaw to Medicine Hat, the landscape is a bit different. It changes to rolling low hills and consists basically of grassland sprinkled with a bit of sage. This is the open range we often see in cowboy movies and is occupied by cattle. The are no trees here at all, very strange but true. Also, there is almost no sign of human habitation. Every 20 - 30 km you may see a farm building complex and that's it. We never saw one farmer in the fields. Right now everything is soaking wet with water everywhere on the fields. Apparently, spring 2010 is one of the coldest and wettest on record here in the prairie provinces. We also saw a number of deer herds in fields.

One of the things that you'll see everywhere are the prairie sloughs . These are large ponds, often surrounded by willow trees or shrubs. These sloughs are often preserved by "Ducks Unlimited", an wildlife preservation organization that promotes the maintenance of duck flocks in the prairies. They pay the farmers a certain amount of money to not drain the sloughs and plant crop in them. This is one organization that was set up by hunters by the way to preserve the ducks not just for hunters but to keep the flocks healthy and large.

In Medicine Hat we left Hwy 1 (which goes on to Calgary) and got on Hwy 3 to Taber. We will continue tomorrow on Hwy 3 until Fort Steele, BC. The scenery again changes after Medicine Hat. The land is not quite as flat as in Manitoba and the eastern part of Saskatchewan. It is gently rolling and planted with cash crops rather than roaming cattle. The thing that we noticed was that northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan don't look too prosperous. Everything looks kinda old and dilapidated (uhh, another big word). However Alberta looks very prosperous. Everything seems to be newer and much better maintained.

Oh yeah, in Saskatchewan, we saw a lot of working oil derricks along the road. We noticed this also on our last trip in South Dakota. Makes you wonder how much oil there still is after all this time of pumping.

We arrived in good time at our hotel in Taber. Partly because of the time change but also because we didn't want to drive too much today, we arrived at our destination before 2 o'clock. We plan a nice relaxing afternoon and evening for today.

Well, that's about it for today again. Tomorrow we hope to see the Rockies and stop in Golden, BC for the weekend for the R&R.

On the praries today.....brrrr

This morning we got up with beautiful sunshine. It was a nice 13 deg. C, warm enough for just a t-shirt and shorts (at least for me). Today is Annie's birthday and I didn't forget (Annie did though). We stayed overnight in Kenora. This is the jewel of the North in our books. It is situated on Lake of the Woods and is just so picturesque. We set off again in our trusty Honda and hit Hwy 17 right away. We made good time and crossed over into Manitoba. When we crossed, the highway turned into Highway 1 and became a 4-lane road. We will have 4 lanes all the way to Lethbridge, AB, whoo hoo what a luxury. Pretty soon after we crossed into Manitoba, about 50 km before Winnipeg, we hit the prairies and the landscape became less interesting. For those of you who have never been in Manitoba or Saskatchewan, the prairies are sort of like traveling from London to Windsor. Now the trip from London to Windsor probably takes about 2 hours, while travelling by car through the prairies will take us a good 2 days. The landscape is pretty flat with trees here and there. Sometimes the landscape is undulating (nice big word eh?) somewhat but more often than not it is as flat as a pancake. Right now, nothing flowers here yet but in some places we can see the wheat starting to peak above the ground.

Shortly after crossing into Manitoba, the sun started to disappear and the temperature started to drop. Near Winnipeg it started to rain. For the rest of the day we had rain off and on, mostly on, and the temperature continued to drop to 7 deg. C. I understand that back home you guys are still into a heat wave. We wish we had some of that here. It doesn't look like we're going to warm up here for the next few days either.

Just to back-track a bit, yesterday we crossed the continental divide. That means that the rivers now all flow north toward Hudson Bay or the Arctic Ocean. Just a little trivia for those of you that are trivia nuts like me.

In spite, or maybe because, of the cold wet weather we made good time and crossed into Saskatchewan shortly after lunch. We made it to Regina and started looking for a hotel/motel. We finally found a reasonably priced motel but although we plunked our $90.00 down, we're not too impressed with it. It's pretty basic for the price but at least it has a wireless Internet connection. Even budget chain hotels want $115 - $130 per night here which we find a real rip-off. The same hotels a couple of hundred miles south of us (in the US) charge half that price.

Well enough bitching, we went to a nice restaurant to celebrated Annie's birthday and really enjoyed our meals there. We didn't stop anywhere today for any special attraction, mainly because there weren't any. So, I have nothing more interesting to report. Tomorrow will likely be more or less a repeat of today I expect (minus the nice Kenora scenery).

We tried to Skype with Caroline and the grandkids tonight, but we have a very slow bad connection so it didn't work too well. We'll have to try some other time again.

To all a good night and I'll catch you tomorrow again via my blog.

Day 2 and 3...

Yesterday we left Sault Ste. Marie in good time. We didn't have a very good sleep due to the heat and the noisy air conditioner. However, we woke up to an overcast day. The temperature at 7:30 was already 16 deg C. though. After checking out, we had a quick bite to eat and filled up our travel mugs with coffee to sip while driving, oh yeah!!

We got onto Hwy 17 right away and started off our travelling day. There was quite a bit of cloud but that didn't diminish the grandeur of the scenery. The first stretch of the Lake Superior route from Sault Ste. Marie to Wawa was just spectacular. The terrain is rugged and mountainous with the road twisting and turning. Although lake Superior is not always visible, when it is, it just adds to the beauty of the landscape. As we went on, the weather started to clear up and soon the temperature also started to go up. It reached 29 deg C. eventually by noon. We stopped at a few look-out points to just drink in the vistas. One look-out point was called Old Woman's Bay. We met a guy there who was travelling from Alaska on a motor bike. He was going to Virginia and then via the southern states to California and back up to Alaska. He was going to take 2 months to do the trip. I told him that 2 years ago, we did a good part of his trip as well, albeit going the other way. He was an interesting character to talk to and after a while we wished him a great and safe trip and continued on.

We made good time going to our final destination, Thunder Bay. On a side note, when we left Acton, the gas prices were anywhere from 93.9 to 95.9c/L. Here in northern Ontario we had to pay usually 107.9c/L which was a bit of a shock to us.

The section from Wawa to Marathon was ok but a bit monotonous. This section of road goes inland away from the lake. However, from Marathon to Thunder Bay, the road gets close to lake again and the scenery became quite spectacular again. Finally we arrived at Brian and Yvonne's home around 4:30 thanks to our trusty GPS (we call it "Chicky"). We were warmly welcomed like long lost relatives. After feeding us a fantastic meal, we took a nice walk and relaxed. Brian showed us some of the sights in Thunder Bay which we thoroughly enjoyed. We had an enjoyable evening with Brian, Yvonne, Alexis, Adam and his girlfriend Megan. After getting up to snuff about what was happening with our families, we hit the hay.

This morning Brian and Yvonne took us to a Finnish restaurant called the Hoito. Apparently it's a landmark restaurant that has been there for 100 years. It served the loggers and other workmen in those those early times well and continues to do so today. We had a great time sharing breakfast. Adam also joined us before heading off to work. We said goodbye to the Schenks around 9:30 and were on our way.

A couple of blocks after we got onto Hwy 17 we had to brake sharply because a deer was running across the busy highway right in front of us. Unfortunately, a car going the opposite direction from us hit the deer. We were a little rattled and missed our turn. This was fortunate however, since we had to detour a bit and then saw the sign for old Fort William. Being a bit of a history buff, I had read about Fort William and thought it would be neat to pay it a visit. Annie was all for it as well since we had decided only to go as far as Kenora today anyway. Unfortunately, it started to drizzle a bit and as you can see in our pictures, it was pretty grey and cloudy. We took a guided tour together with a couple from France and an American from Michigan. Our guide was dressed as a voyageur and she really made it fun. I played right along and pretended to be a spy from the rival Honourable Hudson Bay Company. She was very knowledgeable and it proved very difficult to get her out of her historical role. I think she had a lot of fun with me as well trying to recruit me for the North West Company. We kibitsed quite a bit together. Unfortunately we had to reluctantly cut the visit short after a couple of hours in order to get going again if we wanted to make Kenora in good time.

About 20 km out of Thunder Bay, the weather started to clear and the sun came out. The weather today is in the low 20's and the humidity is gone, in other words, just about perfect. We crossed the dateline and set our watches and car clock back an hour. The highway was very good mostly and we made good time. There was road work going on at quite a few sections of Hwy 17. This was often very frustration to us since we usually had to wait 5 or more minutes at the flag person before we were allowed to proceed along the single lane that was open. This happened about 6 or 7 times on the stretch from Ignace to Kenora. I guess the summertime road repair season is now in full swing and we better get used to it since nearly all the roads that we will be travelling on are 2-lane highways. Oh well, we'll take a happy pill and try to ignore these small bumps on the road (pun intended).

We arrived in Kenora in decent time and found us a hotel. The hotel prices are not cheap though here in northern Ontario just like the gas prices. It's hard to find a decent room under $100.00. Anyway, after a nice dinner we're relaxing in our room watching the finale of American Idol. We just found out that Lee is the winner. Congrats to Lee!!

Day 1 of our trip...

Well...this is the first day of our trip. Annie and I got up around 7 this morning and we completed packing our Honda CRV in record time. We had packed most of our stuff already the night before. The weather was just perfect, bright sunshine and around 16 deg when we left home around 7:30. Today is the last day of the Victoria day long weekend and we were in luck...almost no traffic on the road. Even the 400 was smooth sailing. The cottage traffic had not yet started and even then was going in the opposite direction. We made good time along this by now familiar route and quickly settled into our familiar routine. In Perry Sound we made a pit stop and fuelled up the Honda and ourselves (coffee). The last time we saw a black bear on Hwy 69 north of Perry Sound and this time we saw another one, albeit dead unfortunately. We reached Sudbury in good time and stopped for lunch at Timmy's.

Along Hwy 17, we stopped for a break at a tiny town called Spanish. It's claim to fame is being right on an inlet off Lake Huron and boasting a marina. There was a neat look-out point beside the marina as well that we climbed. It was about 150ft high or so. After climbing a lot of steps we got to the top and enjoyed the vista. There were a few boats out but it was far from busy. By now, all the holiday people had probably set off back home to Sudbury or Sault Ste. Marie. Did I mention that by now it was quite hot? The temperature climbed to 29 deg.

but it felt more like 34 by now. We're not complaining though. In any case, the Honda is equipped with A/C so we were fine as long as we were driving.

We got to Sault Ste. Marie in good time and checked into the hotel by 4:30. After settling in, we had a nice dinner at one of favourite restaurants, Swiss Chalet. We then decided to have a look at the locks at the boardwalk on the waterfront. We enjoyed stretching our legs a bit, but cut it a bit short since the temperature was still a stifling, humid 28 deg. The wind was nice though when we walked back to the car.

Anyway, nothing much exciting for today which is good. Everything went smoothly, the Honda just hummed along and we're just relaxing. BTW, there were an inordinate number of OPP cops out to ticket the unwary speeding motorists today. I guess Mr. Fantino put a lot of extra cops out for the holiday weekend. We decided not to speed too much all day because of this. No more than 5-8 km over the limit this time.

So that's it for now. Tomorrow we hope to arrive in Thunder Bay at the Schenks (Annie's niece) where we'll stay overnight. You'll not get a BLOG for tomorrow, but I'll catch up on Wednesday again.

G'day folks. We're now 18 days away from starting our trip through western Canada, Alaska and the northern United States. At this point, we're getting prepared, getting our Honda CR-V fixed for starters. I just had the vehicle in to get the oil changed and an overall inspection. And sure enough...our good mechanic friend Kevin just phoned me that the brake pads needed replacement. For good measure, we decided to replace the rear rotors as well since they were quite rusted around the edges. Luckily, the front rotors were still pristine and were ok.

I also went over our trip check list from our last expedition two years ago and made some minor changes. It has become standard operation procedure for our family to generate lists for any trip or vacation. So far it has helped us not to forget any important items. To give you an idea, our check list includes not only the things to bring along but also items to consider such as emptying the fridge, turning off the heat, getting people to check the house/mail/plants when we're away. Getting emergency contact phone numbers and email addresses to key people, etc.

We hope to start our trip on Monday 24 May. The general route will be as follows: northern Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC, Yukon, Alaska, Yukon, BC, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and back to Ontario. As you can see, I included a map for you to get a general idea of how we plan to travel. BTW, you can click the map to expand it to a larger size. This does not mean of course that we feel bound by the route. We may, and probably will, make changes as we go along. I'm planning to make regular updates to this blog as we travel. I'll be bringing my trusty laptop computer along to do this.