Hopefully now I can finally conclude the vacation blogging – thanks for sticking with me on this one.
Banff National Park is a long park that runs North – South on the line of British Columbia and Alberta. On the North side it connects with Jasper National Park (we did not make it that far), but we did drive about an hour north to Lake Louise. There are two highways running along the National Park. There's the main throughfair – that is all fenced in, safe and open 24 hours a day. The side road, that parallels the free way is supposed to be the dangerous wildlife road, open only during broad daylight hours. We woke up, had a good camp breakfast, waited until the sun was high in the sky and set off for the scenic route cautiously hoping to see some animals. Let's just say there were NO animals out. The road follows a beautiful crystal clear river – perfect griz bear territory – nope...
Anyways – on the way we stopped at Johnson Falls. There were a bunch of cool little catwalks and suspended walkways along the trail which followed this river gorge.
This rock looked like a giant shark fin in the river.
The falls were beautiful and very loud. I joked the entire time we were in Banff that the Canadians had a thing for those little tree shaped air fresheners and that they hang them all over along the trails. It smelled GOOD up there. Fresh pine and crisp air, like a giant Christmas tree.
We got back on the road and continued North. We passed Castle Rock on the way. Bummer it was so cloudy!
More beautiful views on the way up...
We finally made it to Lake Louise. For some reason I had become dead set on going to Banff and seeing Lake Louise after I came across the photos online one time.
First glimpse of the Lake!
The water was SO BLUE - the pictures just don't do it justice.
Here we are! By the way - it was super cold, it had just snowed there the day before and closed all the trails.
Glaciers!
Before we left the town of Banff we stopped by the visitor's center to ask about a good (easy) day hike. Unfortunately most of the hikes were closed due to grizzly bears. Most of the ones that were open required large groups (so the bears would be frightened away) The guide recommended the Agnes Lake hike (safe because it was well traveled), he wowed us with the knowledge of a tea house at the top and promised it was an easy 7 kilometer (about 4 1/2 mile) day hike... yea... about that.
This guide did not mention that it was steep - and I mean STEEP. ALL uphill for 2 miles... about a 1/4 mile gain in elevation, doesn't sound like much, but remember we were really high in altitude which equals thing air...
A view of Lake Louise on the way up. I like this photo because it actually shows just how blue the water is.
At least we had good views along the way -
We reached Mirror Lake - halfway there!!
We continued to hike (uphill) and we spotted the tea house! I think this was even more torture though because it looked waaay closer than it actually was. The waterfall (to the left) of the teahouse was so cool!
It took us a few hours (we were making good time, no time to waste - we had a busy day ahead!) but we made it!!
Chris at the waterfall -
View of the Banff Valley -
Sitting at Agnes Lake! It was so quiet and the air so clean - well worth the hike.
After all that work we definitely wanted to take advantage of the tea house. Whoever thought of putting a tea house at the top of a brutal hike was BRILLIANT - thank you to the Swiss. This little hut at the top had no electricity, but everything was made fresh right there. We indulged in a apple cobbler and a pot of hot tea. It was amazing to sit outside in the cold air with a pot of tea and just take in the scenery.
We took a short stroll around Agnes lake before heading back down the mountain. We could've continued on to another tea house near the Beehive (the big rock moutnain in the photo) but we decided to head down so we would have time to hit up the Lake Louise Ski Resort for a chair lift ride (we don't know how to slow down and relax on vacation...)
After the hike we drove to the other side of the valley to Lake Louise Ski Resort for a chair lift ride up the mountain. The resort is right in prime bear turf so we were hoping for a spotting. When you drive into the ski area you go through an electric fence, to keep the bears away from the lodge. Once you get on the chair lift, you go up and over the electric fence and you're right over the grizzly habitat. Of course, we didn't see any bears... go figure...
Hello giant mountain -
Now I'm really not a fan of chair lifts - but I was a big girl! Here's proof!
Where are you bears?? I wouldn't have minded seeing on from the safety of my aerial perch.
And the views... just breathtaking. I know it's totally cliche, but you have to see it for yourself.
There's Lake Louise where we were earlier that day.
See! I wasn't making it up!
That finished our day - we were exhausted! Back to camp!
The next day we woke up, packed up and headed out - Although, go figure, the weather was spectacular! We just could not resist another stop at Lake Louise on the way out. There have been a few times in my life where I literally can not stop taking photos of something. The last time this happened was the Sydney Opera House, it's like you just want to make sure you remember it forever.
Now jumped back in the car and cut west. The drive was nice, very mountainous and we crossed through three National Parks (Yoho, Glacier and Mt Revelstoke). Would've made for a nice drive, but this is where things got real interesting, real fast. Let me back track a little bit. On the way into Montana - right near the Montana/Idaho state line we had a tiny bit of car trouble. While pulling back onto the highway there was a strange little transmission "buck" and we got a warning light on the dash. Hm, odd. We pulled over, turned the car off and back on - we just kinda drove carefully. No more problems came up... until... We were driving out of Banff and we had some very, very strange transmission issues. Bucking, strange noises, warning lights - you name it. The most alarming was the total loss of acceleration while going up the pass. Wonderful. This was also Friday afternoon, in the middle of nowhere, not real convienant. We looked at the map and (THANK YOU) GPS and found the closest Ford dealership - an hour out in Kamloops. It was about 4 pm, the close at 5... yikes. We pulled over and made a very expensive phone call to our local US Ford dealer to make sure our warranty would be honored in Canada - yep, we were good to go. We limped the poor car into the dealership about five minutes to 5:00. We explained to them our situation, we have the trailer, we're out of town, we have a long ways (and lots of mountains) to go, we weren't intending to stay the night so we don't have any reservations... they apologized that all their technicians were gone for the night, but they'd be back at 8 am tomorrow and could check us out.
So now we needed a place to stay... I found one on the GPS that didn't look too far out - it was. About a half hour out of Kamloops (granted we are TOTALLY freaked out about the car). We drive all the way there to find out they only take Canadian cash, of course we don't have any cash on us... I find another campground in the British Columbia accommodations guide that "sounded" nice by the description. My only requirement was a shower. This place had them! Bingo! So as we were driving it was beginning to get creepy. Super creepy. We turned into a dark industrial park, and found the scariest trailer park. We drove through it - no joke, cars no blocks, scary looking people. We didn't even stop, just kept driving. Time for plan C. We had the iTouch with us and can get wireless internet on it. I remember Starbucks has free wifi, so we used the GPS to find a Starbucks (had to drive past a few before we found one with parking, remember we had the trailer) barreled in and settled for a hotel reservation. The most inexpensive on (that met my standards) happened to be the Kamloops Howard Johnson. We booked it, put the cost of the room in the "shit happens" budget file and took ourselves out to dinner at Red Robin, no camping food for us that night.
The next morning we woke up early to head to the Ford dealership. Apparently we had a nice view of the Kamloops valley, didn't notice it because it was dark when we finally made it in.
We got to the dealership and the service guy was SUPER nice. He came out to diagnosis it so we didn't have to detach the trailer. Apparently the warning lights didn't produce enough information for them, and he told us his transmission guy will be in on Monday. He also checked our fluids and advised us if we drove easy and went straight home we'd be fine. We had a batch of transmission problems on the way home, but we were on the road once again.
That is, until we hit the US border...
I'm not going to say I've lied, but I've crossed the border before with fruits and veggies and never had a problem. It just happens that the border agent we get is an asshole (sorry, but that puts it nicely). He had a TOTAL attitude from the get-go. Started being very accusing to us. He asked us to roll the back window down. We had the seats folded back and there was A LOT of crap back there, we'd been gone for 2 weeks! He saw the bundle of firewood we had with us. He asked where we got it from and I replied we had bought it in Glacier National Park, Montana. His response "how am I supposed to know that". Needless to say, he directed us to pull over and go into the customs office... this is not going to be good. We go in there and the grill us with questions. What kind of wood is it? Where'd we get it from? What else do we have? Where have we been? etc, etc. The agricultural customs agent then takes our keys and heads out to our car with a hammer and chisel in his hand. He goes out and "tests" the wood, and he is gone for-ever. Not cool to be waiting in the customs office not knowing what the heck is going on. Anyways, we get a lecture (firewood carries beetles) and a letter - DENIED entry into the United States. DENIED entry into our own country?! I know it's just Canada, but it is scary when they take your passports from you, force you to drive back to the Canadian customs line and FORCE you out of the country.
Proof we were kicked out of the United States -
So now we're waiting in line to get BACK into Canada. Remember we're towing the blatantly obvious teardrop trailer. We get to the agent (and she's nice!) and she mentions she noticed the trailer and saw us just trying to get into the US. We gave her our passports and the paper from the US customs. Apparently you can't bring firewood into Canada either (although they didn't notice when we brought it in the first time). We asked her what we were supposed to do?? We couldn't get into the US or into Canada! She asked us how much we had and VERY VERY kindly told us to just pull over, dump it in the dumpster and carry on - THANK YOU CANADIAN CUSTOMS LADY!! But - to complicated matters we also had fresh veggies, citrus (never aloud across the border) and some eggs (also banned at the moment because of the egg recall) and half a bottle of wine. We drove back into Canada a few miles and needed to find somewhere to dump our food. Chris and I have never broken a law in our lives, AND we were just kicked out of our own country, we were a little flighty and were driving around trying to find a dumpster. We found one behind a hotel, just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. We made a new plan, split our food up into two garbage sacks - Chris took one to the McDonald's garbage can, I took one to the Starbucks garbage can. After the deed was done we headed back to the States. Guess what! We crossed without incident! We had a good laugh because about 5 miles into the US there's a billboard stating "burn it where you buy it" for firewood - now you tell us!
So after the transmission and the border we were exceptionally happy to be on the ferry and headed back home. Vacations are nice, but home is always welcomed.
So there you have it. Our vacation.
I'll catch you up on the car problems and the rest of life in the next post!
