SNOW, SUN & SPARKLING SCENERY.

This is it, we are leaving the wetness of the West coast, crossing Canada and seeing what the East coast has to offer. The signs were good as we pull the car out of the garage, the outside air temperature gauge reads 13 degrees, but just five kilometres down the road it has dropped to just five degrees, and the heavens have opened,

they weren’t joking when they said a cold front was passing through. Tonight will be the first night that we sleep in the car and it looks like it might not be as cosy as we thought! We head up the coast road towards Whistler, on the “sea to sky highway” as it is known, but the grey skies hide any images of those mountain tops against the backdrop of blue skies.

We stop at Whistler just to check the place out, but are not impressed, a purpose built village with very little ski in/out and long walks from the accommodation through the village to the chair lifts.

We were originally planning to camp here on our first night, but with the weather still bad we push on further into the mountains, hoping to cross over into Marble Canyon Park where hopefully we will leave the moist coast air behind. Taking the north road through Pemberton we are finally rewarded with some lovely snow capped views,

the elusive blue skies make an appearance and we spend our first night camped in Marble Canyon, complete with camp fire and star filled skies, just like being back in Oz only 20 degrees cooler!!

Well that wasn’t so bad, the next day we head off towards Kamloops stopping by the lake for lunch and what a turnaround in the weather,

I have now just a T shirt on, Jan still has several layers on but at least not her gloves. We spend a couple of days here in Kamloops with my cousin Pat & his wife Bev,

they show us around the local sights including a trip up to Sun Peaks another ski resort nearby, although we still think that the ski in/out at Big White will take a lot of beating. The car has developed a small leak on the top of the radiator which a new washer will fix, but it’s Easter weekend & Ford, the maker of this vehicle do not stock parts for the radiators, strange but true, try a radiator specialist they say, who of course are all shut. So after a couple of hours driving around we finally get a washer from a lawnmower dealer that hopefully will do the trick, oh the joys of overland travel. We leave Pats on the Saturday afternoon crossing from British Columbia into the province of Alberta, staying the night in Jasper in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. We arrive late, about 8.30 at night, due to the change in time zones, we had to advance our watches one hour as we entered Alberta. The temperatures tumbling and we opt to stay in a motel, but only just, after enquiring at a couple who are all fully booked we finally get the last room in the Mountain Park Lodge, which we think is actually the last available room in the village so we think ourselves lucky as the car just didn’t seem that appealing in the freezing night. But the bonus was they have cable TV so I get to watch the Malaysian GP (some people are easily pleased). We leave fully refreshed the next morning on Highway 93, otherwise known as the Icefields Parkway, this road links Jasper to Lake Louise & is the highest and probably the most spectacular in North America, it’s definitely as close as we are going to get to the craggy summits in the Rockies without trekking,

which I don’t think is going to happen!! The weather is perfect and it takes us all day to cover some 190 km with plenty of stops to take in the sights. Halfway along the road is the Columbia Icefield containing some 30 glaciers up to 350m thick. Reaching out from this ice field is the Athabasca Glacier which the last time I visited back in 1971 used to reach right down to the road.

It was difficult to tell this time where the glacier finished because of the snow which did reach down to the road, but the actual glacier had retreated several hundred metres back up the valley. This is the first glacier that we have visited on our world trip that is actually retreating; the others in Pakistan & New Zealand are still increasing in size. After spending a leisurely day on the parkway we opt to camp at Mosquito creek high up in the Rockies, the weather forecast is for an overnight low of -4 and as our sleeping bags are good to -6 we are confident of a sound night’s sleep!! Arriving at the campsite we make ourselves comfortable around a wood burning stove in the shelter, a friendly Canadian, lending us his axe so I could split some logs for the fire.

We spend the evening chatting to a Swedish couple who now live in Canada and have just spent the last two days climbing up the mountains with their skis and then skiing down in the virgin snow, it takes a couple of hours to climb up and then ten minutes to ski down, fit or what, I think we’re stick with the chairlifts!! After a very entertaining evening we settle down for the night, as it turns out the forecast of -4 is a little on the conservative side and waking up in the night wondering why we were so cold, I turn on the ignition to check the outside air temperature, which just happens to be -16. That probably accounts for the sleeping bags that are good to -6 struggling to keep us warm, were we glad to see the sun up at 0630 the next morning and a barmy -9. Not surprisingly we are up early, trying to get the circulation going and counting all our digits to make sure none had fallen off during the night!! Setting off with the car heater on full heat, we arrive at Lake Louise about 45 minutes later, about the same time as my circulation reached back to my toes. Lake Louise is known as the jewel of the Rockies, a stunning emerald green lake that sits in a glacial valley, surrounded by tall snowy peaks. Well that’s what the guide books say, of course that’s in the summer when the crowds flock here and you glimpse the lake amongst the heads of others. On the other hand if you take the alternative Jell winter tour, there are no people about at 0930 in the morning when it’s still -9, unfortunately there are no emerald green waters neither but at least the ice skating rink is empty,

(Judith if only you were here now). Banff is our next stop, a town built as a health spa resort back in the early railroad days we didn’t indulge in the spa as it has been reported that they are now filling it with tap water after the natural spring dried up. We instead thought we might hike to the summit of Sulphur Mountain, a little exercise wouldn’t go amiss after all this driving around. This hike usually takes about two hours to do, and then you can take a free gondola ride back down. Of course this being the Jell winter tour, the track had advisory notices and a gate across, asking you not to use it due to the dangerous slippery conditions. So we paid our $60.00 and rode the gondola to the top (oh yes there’s certainly a charge for going up), spotting on the way one young couple who ignored the signs and were walking to the top, the girl having only flat shoes and no socks on, I hope she still had all her toes if they finally got to the top.

ALMOST THERE

We’ve now been on the road two weeks and are dropping down out of the Rockies onto the prairies & Calgary, the craggy mountains give way to wide open blue skies and open plains for as far as the eye can see. As we enter Calgary we are surprised to see, built onto a small slope by the highway, a ski hill with the 70m & 90m ski jumps still in place

left over from the 1988 winter Olympic Games. We spend a couple of days here checking out the sights and also get the oil change done on the car at one of the many drive thru garages that cater for this very need. You drive up they give you a coffee and a newspaper to read, & then while you sit in your vehicle they change the oil & filter, check all the fluids all for $37 about £24, ten minutes later it’s all done and your away. These would have certainly been a benefit to me in Oz after the numerous oil changes we had to do in the outback. We haven’t had temperatures of -16 anymore, but below freezing at night is becoming the norm out on the prairies, so when we get to Drumheller it’s not the dinosaur museum that’s our first call, but the Salvation Army shop to pick up some warm blankets to counter the cold nights. Now that we are warm again we can enjoy the sights around Drumheller known as the badlands, small humped and craggy hills & steep-walled canyons eroded out of the prairie revealing millions of years of the earth’s geological history. The area is renowned for its dinosaur fossils.

ONE, TWO, THREE, PERHAPS FOUR DINOSAURS !!!!!!!!

More complete dinosaur skeletons of the cretaceous period have been found in this region, than anywhere else on the planet. We visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology which outlines this early life on earth plus they have 35 complete dinosaur skeletons on display, certainly a must see if you are ever in the area. Camping at Dinosaur Provincial Park that night, the weather forecast is not good, a high of 18 degrees during the day is set to plummet over the next few days with a forecast of snow on the way. When we wake in the morning there is already a covering of snow/ice

and we quickly decide to forego any of the walks in the park in the hope of heading south for warmer weather, the first 100km’s of driving is on roads that are treacherous covered in ice & snow,

luckily they are very straight so no nasty bends to contend with, not that helped with Jan’s nervousness though. This weather is amazing only yesterday it was 18 degrees, today it’s -3 and this is supposed to be spring! “Head Smashed In buffalo Jump” is our next stop, this place is where the Blackfoot Indians stampeded bison over the cliff, then used the meat, hide, bone, horns and nearly everything else for their supplies and materials for the rest of the year, the interactive centre was a real hive of information and more importantly heat, needless to say we spent a good couple of hours in there keeping warm. This whole area has lots of history with local Indian tribes & the North West Mounted Police, now known as the Mounties. They were here to try and control the whiskey trading that went on between the Indians and the traders from the states. We leave Alberta and head into Saskatchewan, as it turns out just in front of a winter storm, “I’m sure summer is supposed to follow spring not winter again!” Keeping tabs on the weather forecast we head right down to the bottom of Canada and drive along highway 18 camping right next to Grasslands National Park. This area which is classed as semi arid desert receives little rainfall each year, apart from our night there where the thunderstorms finally gave way to snow showers by morning,

yes we are certainly getting our money’s worth out of our winter tyres! The storm warning has now been stepped up to alert level with up to 30 cm of snow forecast. We decide to head off to Moose Jaw and hold up in a motel for a couple of days while the worst of this weather passes, it’s no fun scrapping the snow off your teabag when you are trying to make a cup of tea!! We meander our way north through the cities of Regina, Saskatoon & Prince Albert, the prairies giving way to trees and lakes the further north we venture.

THE OFFICE IS GETTING SMALLER BY THE DAY.

As we go north we find it more difficult to find campsites, most don’t open until May some even as late as June. The only one we could find in Saskatoon was half under water after the winter storm went through a few days earlier(we did manage to park in the dry half). At Prince Albert we enquire at the tourist information about any open sites but there are none, after several phone calls they come up with a person who has some cabins up on Candle Lake, some 100km north and was prepared to let us park there using their facilities a real bonus.

JAN GETTING TO GRIPS WITH THE LOCAL WILDLIFE!!!!

As it turns out this person’s name was Lou and she is 84 years old running not only the cabins and small R/V park, but also the local garage and was about to open a brand new 17 bedroom lodge just across the road, there was just no stopping this lady, and we enjoyed a very entertaining evening in her company.

Plus we also got a trip out to view her brand new lodge, and a view of the frozen lake complete with a fox running across it,

its nights like these that will become fond memories when our trip is finished. From here we head north east to the most northerly point of our trip across Canada & Flin Flon, in Manitoba. This copper mining & smelting town is a very important industry for the locals, but a bit of a blot on the landscape after travelling over the hundreds of km’s of lake filled timber land to get there,

ICE FROM THE LAKE

we spend one night in the local miners hotel, before heading south the next day. Manitoba was settled in the late 19th century by a huge population of Ukrainian settlers, there farms and churches are still much in evidence today as we drive down past them on our way to Winnipeg. We spend a leisurely day in the capital of Manitoba, enjoying sunny temperatures of 22 degrees, coupled with a tour of the Canadian Royal Mint, where we handled a gold bar worth $500,000, we could certainly do this trip & more again, if only we could have kept that gold bar!!

From Winnipeg we cross the longitudinal centre of Canada still heading east but now we are going to drop down into the states and cross under Lake Superior, we are told this is much more scenic than the northern Canadian side. It was while we were driving down to Fort Frances where we will cross the border that we spot our first bear walking in the road, but he soon runs off into the trees when he saw us, much to Jan’s relief!

At the border the officers are obviously having a quiet day and so we are pulled over to have an identification check plus have the car searched, they discover that the vehicle has had a new fuel tank fitted recently and were quite surprised that I hadn’t fitted it, I think that all the stamps in the passports including Iran had got them concerned as to what exactly us Brits are doing over here. We drive along Lake Superior’s shoreline and are not disappointed with the scenery,

the upper peninsula in Michigan is truly outstanding, we really like this place, it has such a nice feel to it. In fact we liked it that much that we took a day out to go and have a look at some property while we were in the area, including a small resort complex down on Thunder Lake comprising of one three bed house plus four cabins with lake frontage all for £170,000.

Fishing in the summer and riding snow mobiles in the winter, could this be the retirement place we have been looking for!!!! Although we have been very pleasantly surprised at the U.S especially with it’s much cheaper food, fuel & booze compared to Canada, but there is always the health care cost issue that will need further investigation. Well tomorrow we cross back over into Canada and Niagara falls, so until the next time its goodbye from the Jells in Port Huron just in the states.

P.S SORRY ABOUT THE SIZE OF THIS ONE ANN HOPE THE PRINTER MAKES IT!!