Day 365: One Year on the Road!

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Ben

Happy Anniversary! We left Calgary this morning and drove South towards the US border. The terrain here is flat and planted with vast fields of canola:

After a 30 minute wait in line, we crossed into the US! We enjoyed our two months in Canada and Alaska, but we’re all very happy to be back in the continental US. Continuing South, we arrived at the visitor center for Glacier National Park:

The kids worked on the Junior Ranger program here:

And received their badges:

Like our rush through the Canadian Rockies, we would have loved to have spent a couple days in Glacier. We are somewhat pressed for time between now and M’s Bar Mitzvah in mid-September, and wildfires are obscuring the views here anyway, so we didn’t linger. I really wanted to ride the going-to-the-sun road, but there’s nine miles of gravel surface during this phase of road repair, with significant delays to transit, so we will have to tour Glacier in a more in-depth way some other time. The smoke from forest fires in Washington state made it hard to see much of anything:

From higher up, we could look down into Glacier’s glacier carved valleys:

As we drove around the South side of the park, we encountered a train pulling hundreds of tanker cars:

We intended to overnight at the Walmart of Missoula tonight, but I discovered during a bathroom stop that our rear passenger wheel had a broken leaf in its leaf spring, probably caused by the stress brought on by the leaf spring bolt failure we had in Alaska. I pounded the broken leaf back into place, and we drove to the much closer Lowes of Kalispell where we’re staying the night. See the trip map for driving details.

Day 364: Calgary Heritage Park

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Ben

Yesterday was Tisha B’Av, and the fast went as well as could be expected. While it’s obvious driving around in Canada that we’re not in the US, within the synagogue walls there’s no difference between Calgary and any synagogue in the US.

We were supposed to leave Calgary today, but our new friend Gary from the synagogue, who works at the Heritage Park here in Calgary, took us into the park as his guests.

On the way over, we noticed that turn lanes in Canada have two red lights. I’m not sure why:

The first building we visited in the park was a synagogue from the the turn of the century. Like most of the buildings in the park, it was trucked here from another location in Alberta and restored:

Gary showed us the Sefer Torah in the ark:

Gary shows us around:

Even the maintenance staff are period correct:

We explored the rest of the park:

The park includes amusement park rides from the World War I era:

The blacksmith shop:

A steam locomotive takes visitors around the park:

The grain elevator was powered by a 15-horsepower long-stroke engine, very similar to the engine running the gold stamp at Laws Railroad Museum:

This acrylic window allowed us to see the grain scoops moving inside the elevator:

Here the cart is poised to dump its grain into the weighing area before being scooped up into the elevator:

Shave and a haircut, two bits:

Restroom kitsch:

1920s prairie schoolhouse:

In jail:

Harvester:

Another part of the park focused on the fur trade circa 1870:

This fur stamp was used to compress stacks of furs for bundling and shipping to England:

Surveyor’s cabin:

Massive snowplow railcar:

The house of one of the famous five is here as well:

Our last stop was gasoline alley:

I liked the old pumps even more than the cars:

There was a 1950s RV on display:

The heritage museum was fantastic, and we didn’t get back to the RV until 5:15PM, so we decided to stay a third night in Calgary and leave tomorrow morning.

Day 362: Hiking on the Glacier

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Ben

This morning I went for a pre-breakfast ride. Heading East from the RV, I soon climbed 200 vertical feet to cross Sunwapta Pass, then descended 1,800 vertical feet on the far side. Great biking scenery was had throughout:

Of course I had to climb those 1,800 feet back up to the pass, then descended back to the RV. I was ready for breakfast by the time I got back to the RV!

After breakfast, we hiked cross-country towards the Athabasca Glacier:

As we approached the toe of the glacier, we could see that it was covered in glacial debris:

We hiked up onto the glacier for a bit:

The higher we went, the cleaner and more slippery the glacier became:

We carefully climbed down:

Next we drove East to cross over Bow Summit. We hiked out to an overlook for Peyto Lake:

The glacial runoff that feeds this lake is rich with silt that gives the lake its turquoise color:

After Peyto Lake, we continued East out of the park to arrive in Calgary. We’re overnighting in Calgary in the Jewish community tonight and tomorrow night for Tisha B’Av. See the trip map for driving details and our current location.

Day 361: Into the Canadian Rockies

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Ben

This morning we headed out from our Shabbos dispersed camping location. It’s called Crown Land here in Canada, and it doesn’t seem to have the same 14 day limits that BLM land has in the US. Some folks live here while working in the nearby oil and gas fields, and some live in town and leave their RVs here and come down for the weekends. We spent some time Saturday night chatting with our neighbors John and Carla around their impressive campfire.

Here’s a view of our corner of the camping area as we left:

We drove South to Grande Cache and stopped at the visitor center. Canadians do love their stick-your-heads-though-the-wall things, we see them all the time up here:

Here is a “Grande Cache”, a large elevated building for keeping a trapper’s furs, food, and equipment high and dry for the winter:

We continued Southwest into Jasper National Park, where we passed some sheep grazing curbside:

There were plenty of great views to be had as we drove on through the park:

Eventually we reached the Columbia Icefield, which is like a giant bowl, spilling ice over its edge to form glaciers as they move downhill into low valleys:

Here the ice pushed out breaks off and falls to the valley floor below. This rim of ice must be at least 100 feet thick:

We are overnighting at the Columbia Icefield parking lot, across from the Athabasca Glacier. It’s $15.70 to park here for the night, but at least we get some great views:

The Athabasca Glacier in the distance:

See the trip map for driving details.

Day 359: Farewell to the Alaska Highway

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Ben

This morning we returned to the Dawson Creek visitor center and stopped by the grain elevator next door which has been converted into an art gallery:

A couple blocks away in downtown is the Alaska Highway museum:

They had a nice model of the Kiskatinaw bridge that we crossed yesterday:

The museum was showing the excellent PBS documentary about AlCan, the Alaska Highway:

It’s amazing to think that the Army Corps of Engineers were able to build this road through 1,500 miles of wilderness in less than a year.

Outside stood the official Mile 0 obelisk, where it all began:

Driving South, we passed through the town of Pouce Coupe and continued on towards Grande Prairie, crossing into Alberta and Mountain Time on the way. This area is known for it’s canola production, its flowers creating vibrant tracts of bright yellow along the highway:

Suddenly we find that we’ve moved from mountainous bear country into the Canadian equivalent of Wisconsin:

Our Alaska adventure was amazing. It was a ton of driving, much of it over unpaved and awful roads. But I’ll never forget the fireweed along the highways, the unending expanse of black spruce over permafrost, the soggy and desolate tundra, the chill of the Arctic Ocean, the blue glaciers spilling down impossibly steep and rugged mountains into the ocean, the bears, the moose, the caribou, and going to sleep beneath the midnight sun.

Tonight, we’re dispersed camping along the Bighorn Highway between Grande Prairie and Grande Cache. Most of our neighbors live here all summer, leaving each morning to go work at the nearby oil and natural gas fields.

Good Shabbos from the Bighorn Highway! See our trip map for today’s drive.