More Banff To Jasper

It was a second amazing day in a row enjoying the run from Banff to Jasper. Another day of superlatives. The "sno-coach" shown below takes area visitors onto the Columbia Glacier in the distance behind it. There is a second such coach in the picture, already on the glacier, but to give you a sense of the scale here- you can't even see the other coach when the picture is blown to full size- unless of course you can make out that little speck way way off in the distance. You DO have to see it to appreciate the grandeur of it all.It was a productive day for wildlife sightings as well. Lots more elk and even more Big Horn Sheep, one moose off in a distance at a place where there was no way to stop and get a picture. And speaking of NO PICTURE, there was one point along the run when I looked up at the mountain before us and said to Marilyn, I hope to you-know-what that is not a road up that hill that we need to travel..." It looked like a zigging zagging series of cuts to keep rocks from falling on the highway below- only it had what, at that distance, looked vaguely like a guard rail. Most of this stretch had been deceptively easy to drive with little sense of change in elevation and little sense that you could exit the roadway and plummet over the edge into the abyss at any given moment, but THIS...this gave me cause for concern. And with good cause- because it was exactly what it had appeared to be- the single most challenging grade and elevation change of the last two days. I needed to drop to 2nd gear to keep old Buster moving his butt up the mountain. It was an "I think I can, I think I can" type of situation. I didn't stop at the scenic overlooks for fear of never getting going again, and maybe I should just say I didn't stop "for fear." Period.
Much of the day was spent driving past areas posted as "Avalanche Zone" and to be sure, there were several places where there were "fresh" signs that the snow cap had given out and come down clearing everything in its path including rocks, trees and even the roadway. There were fresh repairs in a number of places and we took the posted warnings seriously and kept an eye out for what was happening above us most of the day. It may be May in the rest of the world, but it sure doesn't seem like it here, even though daytime temperatures have been more than comfortable. Winter wonderland is alive and well here for now.
Athabasca Falls is a beautiful spot along the route. It is in the part of the Province of Alberta where the Canadian Oil Sands Reserves are to be found. I spoke with a camp ground owner who is also on the Alberta Travel Council and he told me of the great difficulty in finding workers not only for campgrounds which are seasonal, but for nearly every job available here- the reason is that the oil field jobs pay wages that make it nearly impossible not to go to work for them if you have a skill they can possibly use. But the oil shale was nowhere to be found today and the falls was, so here's the picture...

And here's a great couple we met along the way today. While we were pulled over at a scenic overlook (they call them "parking lots" in Alberta) another coach towing a car pulled up along side.
"OK. Who's from Florida?" asked the driver.
Long story short: Tom and Mary Lou had a house on Cape Coral before going full time in their coach. They lived near the library which put them not too many blocks away from our place on the Cape. Where are they headed? Alaska. Where are they staying tonight? Same place we are? Where? Two sites over to be exact, so we got together for happy hour and got to know each other a bit. When we first met, I was wearing my "Bite Me" mosquito shirt from Roatan. Can you believe they are divers too and had been on one of the Roatan live aboard dive boats? We have a lot of small world stories (guess this one is a small third world story). Tom's theory is that the world may not actually be that small, but the number of adventurous people probably is quite small, so we always meet sooner or later. I like that! Rings true. If you can, note the front plate of their coach: 2CHILL. It's a parrot head plate and for those who may be saying, " A what?" A parrot head is a Jimmy Buffet music fan. And I am a fan of any fan of Jimmy's. No doubt we'll see you again down the road.
Closing notes about Verizon cell phone service and the pc card for the wireless laptop: Yea, yea, I know, this is more technical than this blog usually gets, that's why we have the link to Geeks On Tour, but a number of readers have been discussing phone connectivity lately so now that we have some slightly out of the ordinary experience I thought I would weigh in. Much to our shock, amazement, and joy, our cell service with Verizon on the North American plan has been totally without interruption so far in Canada, with the exception of certain parts of the Banff to Jasper run- where no one gets service of any kind and probably never will. The mountains there are so high and surround the road so completely that on occasion even the GPS dropped the satellite for bits here and there. Verizon told us not to expect coverage in many of the areas we have been. Now maybe that will become the case as get further north and in more remote areas but so far so good. And the PC card has worked absolutely everywhere the cell did, despite the fact that Verizon told us that probably none of the Canadian towers would support data transmission. This is NOT a paid advertisement (Although, Verizon, if you're reading this I do love you and I do have a sponsorship open for you). But it is to confirm that where others have failed, Verizon, knock on wood, is hanging in there with the wifi and the satellite phones.

One final note for tonight, when we arrived at the campground (well, actually right before we arrived) we drove past it a couple miles into the village of Hinton, which will not be on our route tomorrow, so that we could fuel up at the only truck stop for many miles. The pumps were fitted much differently than in the states, the main difference being the nozzle is small and looks like a gasoline nozzle. So I asked a number of questions to assure myself that in fact I would be pumping the correct fuel into the tank- #2 diesel. First one employee, then two, then three came out to the pump to "help." Much to our surprise, they all claimed never to have seen a motor coach this big at their service station and they all wanted a good look and a quick chat. Their "diesel guy" as they called him was curios to know if he could buy our kayaks, so I guess he hadn't seen those before either. I don't know! The town didn't seem THAT small to me. It was a curious but friendly enough encounter and I guess we all learned something- and isn't that just the point!?

The Bigger They Are...

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, or so the saying goes. Last night, as I was washing my hair in my nice, private shower, in my nice, comfy coach, tucked into the Canadian Rockies between Banff and Jasper, where 911 is a joke because "ain't no phone service anyway", the saying's worth became evident. The fold-down seat in the shower stall, rated to hold a 300 pound "showerer" (a rating which I am nowhere near), let go, actually shattered without warning- and my 6'3" vertical frame was instantaneously dropped and wedged into the bottom of the stall. This is like trying to fit a 20" salmon into a six inch fry pan- some thing's gonna get bruised along the way. Wrenched my foot pretty good, cut a finger on the right hand, gashed my abdomen a tad, and did irreparable damage to my pride. Falling down is embarrassing enough, but far worse when one is bare ass to boot. I let out a reflex grunt when I hit bottom. Marilyn, who doesn't ordinarily move all that fast, came dashing in from the salon to report an earthquake- only to find me scrunched up in the bottom of the shower.
"Did you pass out? Did you have a heart attack? Did you suffer a stroke" Is your back OK? Are you hurt?"
Let's see, "No, No, No, No, and Perhaps."
One or both of us managed to open the shower door, water still running on full. You've seen the ads where the person has fallen and can't get up? Been there, now, done that. Just like sardines do not remove themselves from the can, I couldn't seem to find a position from which to start the initial ascent from the shower pit. But after some adjusting, we managed to extricate my crumpled ruins from the pit without having to remove the skylight over the shower and having the glacier sight seeing helicopter hook on and pull me up through it.
A couple bruises, a few drops of blood, nothing lasting.
I decide I am A-OK. That allows a concerned wife to say how she really feels about her friend and companion and lover and chauffeur: "Good, because you looked like a soft pretzel that had been left out in the rain!" Eh!
There was a good solid hour of laughter that followed. She's still laughing...
And NO there are mercifully no pictures to accompany this report. You may each thank me for that at the appropriate time.

Mountains In My Mirrors

The true temptation is to post all 130 of the “keeper” photos from today. Cutting it to fewer than 20 took a long time, and while I could and should cut it a whole lot further- I don’t feel like it! The run from Banff to Jasper, of which we completed about half today on the Ice Field Parkway, is the most amazing drive I have ever taken in my life- bar none. In miles it wasn’t all that long a day, but hour wise it took some serious time. Not because the drive was scary or difficult, but because with every bend in the road, the scenery, which was already spectacular, became even more so. Mountains bigger and more breathtaking. Snow cover more solid. Glaciers closer to the road. Wildlife we’ve not spotted before. Multiple photo op stops were necessary! And then I realized that there were mountains in my mirrors- an important life lesson no doubt. We had been so intent on looking forward to the next mighty vista, that we had forgotten to look back to see where we had been. The first time I noticed what was already behind me, I realized it was as good as what lay before. The same mountain from the other side is a different mountain all together.

Most of the photos used for this post will speak for themselves. You can blow them up for a somewhat better idea of what we saw, but honestly a photo cannot portray the sense of majesty and scale of the Canadian Rockies. Talk about awesome! They line both sides of the road we travel. Essentially we are weaving our way through the entire chain of them, so high mountains on the left, on the right, immediately ahead and bringing up the rear at all times. Transitioning from about 3000 feet to 7000 feet elevation, the highway is an engineering marvel and the changes were gradual and nearly unnoticeable. If we weren’t here and seeing it for ourselves, we might just find it unimaginable. But here they are and here we are.

A note on the critter shots. This is wilderness, not a zoo, so you get what you get for a photo opportunity. You can’t jump out and go walking up to the nice bear for a better shot, so pardon the “posterior” angle and slight blurriness. Thanks to the digital zoom just for allowing me to prove I really saw him in the wild! And as for the Big Horn Sheep, well, we worked darn hard to find them but when we did it was an “oh My God” moment to be sure.