Great Wee Roads and Other Observations
Danika and I are back in town, after our 2006 summer vacation. Expect this post to be long Ive limited myself to an hour so you may just want to bookmark and come back with a cup of coffee when the boss isnt around.
Our summer vacation this year was a 2365 mile roadtrip in a big anti-clockwise loop east to the Rockies in Montana, north into Alberta (Canada) and then a final south-west dash back to Seattle. With the impending arrival of Noodlehead this is a vacation that we think that we wont be able to recreate for the
Photos for the affair are available at shutterfly in four reasonable installments:
Getting to Glacier
Glacier National Park
Banff National Park
Jasper National Park
(Indexed on machaggis.net/images and a sample on flickr as rockies06sample)
As a caveat, I feel this trip had bad photo-fu. Unlike some more recent vacations where I merely had to the point the camera and click, it was hard work getting satisfactory shots. There was a lot of scenery and it was all big. So big that it was difficult to squeeze into the lens. Or at least I had trouble. And it was hot when we were traveling which led to a lot of heat haze and limited long distance views. While this could have been compensated with (very) early morning shots I wasnt that committed, which is also represented by not taking a single tripod shot in the whole holiday despite carrying it on a few hikes, and thats just plain bad planning!
So, iPods loaded and Subaru packed (with camping gear we never used!), we headed off, and rather than detail a blow-by-blow account (which you can garner from some of my activity logs here and here), I thought I would capture the gist of the holiday in a few observations.
Great Wee Roads
(A reference from the Iain Banks book Raw Spirit about the excellent-to-drive scenic secondary roads in Scotland.)
In general the US is sorely lacking in roads that are fun to drive. Most roads are too long, too straight, too big, too dull. But thats the nature of the beast we drove somewhere between 4 and 5 times the length of Britain on this trip, in a few days, and had fun doing it, and its because Americans know how to build roads to get from A to B, and then the Canadians copied them. But its not always fun driving like an arrow on a Roman road. The pleasure of a trip like this is that once were off the main stretches (I-90 East from Seattle for example) many state roads have a potential to be more enjoyable speed tends to be limited by random curves, although its always amusing passing US country drivers (in once instance a car coming the other direction stopped in shock). Although the Road to the Sun through Glacier is stunning, it is a tourist road, and the US accolades have to go instead to the stretch of road down the east side of Glacier to the East Glacier town (traversed that a few times) and the scenic drive through North Idaho we did early on the second day.
The Icefield Driveway from Lake Louise to Jasper won the prize for most scenic tourist road, and the start of the mad dash home from Jasper (when we headed north-west instead of south-west) was a close second to the East Glacier drive.
Sign Shops
Danika and I have seen a lot of roads and a fair bit of countryside, in a lot of countries. We can often tell as we reach a town a lot about it by the presence of its fast food chains (Dairy Queen? Taco Time? McDonalds?), its mall-saturation (Wal-mart? Target? Costco? Factory Stores? Northgate Mall?) and car dealerships (Ford/Chevrolet/Dodge/John Deere). However I finally had a revelation as to what one of the most important businesses in any US town is: the Sign Shop aka Graphic Design.
As inevitable as a saloon and brothel in an 18th Century wild west town these guys just kept cropping up. And with good reason: without a local presence for making signs most towns would be invisible to the roadtripping eye. I had never noticed this before, but on the first day, leaving Spokane, I had a revelation and subsequent towns seemed to confirm this.
Now we only have to determine if this is international or US only, and also whether we can franchise it like Starbucks and become zillionaires.
It’s a cold, cold splash….
When you jump into into an alpine lake that contains icebergs, but that’s what I did at Iceberg Lake – where else can you do such a thing?
Where is the Wildlife?
I wont harp on this, as Danika will probably insert a blunt instrument into my cranium, but I was mostly disappointed with the wildlife on this trip with a late uptick allowing me to be satisfied.
A decade ago I went to Yellowstone and literally had to swerve past buffalo/bison, wave at moose, stare at animal tracks. It set unrealistic expectations.
On this trip there was very little wildlife until we drove towards Banff. And on the way we saw sheep of some description. Then a few days later, at extreme distance, we saw mountain goats. And when we headed to Jasper it picked up a fabulous bull elk in the Athabasca River watching a herd and another bull, a bear on the other side of the train tracks, bighorn sheep (with horns) at the road side. I was overall, satisfied, but it was a close run thing, especially as the number of sightings almost fit on one hand.
Gee, The US Sure is Cheaper
Glacier National Park, indeed the US National Park system, wins 100%.
Glacier was something like $25 for seven-days, or we could buy (and have in the past) the $50 per family pass to all National Parks for a year.
Banff/Jasper National Parks were c$20 a night. As in, get out by 4pm or we charge you again. A years membership is c$70 a person. Our plan to buy the CanadaParks pass went right out the window.
And once we were there the reality struck in Canada they want your money. Probably because Jasper and Banff are pretty popular ski towns, prices were high. Our most annoying event was attempting to go hiking by driving up a forest road only to be stopped at the base of a (not-running) ski gondola. Cars werent allowed further (looked like a fine road to me, just no tarmac) but a shuttle bus would take us at $23 per person. So thats $46 to go on a 2 hour hike, with all the inconvenience of a bus timetable. On any roadtrip/vacation there are challenging moments, and for this one Danika and I were pissed (as in American pissed). So we used the restrooms and drove away. The family behind us cashed up almost 100 bucks. Ouchie.
An Inconvenient Truth
It was ironic, in a way; we finally watched this movie before going on this holiday and it ended up being very immediate. Indeed it caused a small shroud of unhappiness to follow us around. Because you see, in Glacier National Park, there really are no more glaciers. There are a few, but not hundreds. The snow-covered mountains are dry rock in September. The Weeping Wall it does not weep. And, in this prime opportunity to promote the effects of global warming to hundred of tourists, there was not a word mentioned or a major campaign in sight. The National Parks documentation talks of cyclical effect and not of global warming.
It should be compulsory to watch An Inconvenient Truth (trailer) and visit the website (http://www.climatecrisis.net/) before you leave the park.
That said, there were still icebergs at Iceberg Lake, and as we headed North to Canada there were a lot of glaciers and snow on the mountains. But at the Columbia Icefield stop where you look 1.5 miles from the carpark to the glacier (which you can walk on etc), youre looking from where the glacier reached just a few decades ago.
Food Sucks on Holiday
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt. Although we didnt have a lot of fast food ala chains, we had a lot of burgers, pizza and steak and it was in general average. Our standout breakfasts were from our B&B in Whitefish (the Good Medicine Lodge) and best dinner was pizza and beer at Trubys (also in Whitefish). None of this helped our waistlines much, but none of it was really bad either (Danika may disagree).
Best beer of the vacation was on the Two Medicine Trading Post deck, watching the sun go down on the lake on my birthday Moose Drool from the Big Sky Brewery, Montana.
In Conclusion…
Ive already overrun my hours budget for this post, and havent even started the finicky formatting yet.
However, to summarise:
The scenery is amazing, 7000 feet never felt so good, Danika and hiking Noodlehead were rockstars, and wed do it again. Now.
