4 more days of Rockies diary
Sorry its all together - couldnt get a chance to get it from the laptop to the net...
17 September – Kelowna to Banff
Another day, another bus. Bit early for my liking (8am), but it gave me the chance to be up and out by 640 am, to have spoken to my mum and sister at home, and to be prepared for another day of sights and experiences.
And it was a long experience. 11 hours. Didn’t arrive until 7, at which point I discovered that there was a Mountain Standard Time for this part of the region, and that it was actually 8!
Kelowna is actually in the heart of the Okanagan Valley and has some great views. I hear my sister’s in laws are moving out here soon. Being slightly too practical, I am not sure what they are hoping to do when they get here. But tourism is clearly high on the agenda, with winter sports available for half the year, and road trips, sailing and wine tasting some of the summer attractions.
Our agenda took us through the random name award winning Salmon Arm – presumably so named because of the fishing possibilities. (Winner of this prestigious award on day 1 was Chilliwack – to be fair though, no name in this country can be quite as weird as Shepton Mallett, Stratton on the Fosse or, well, the Welsh railway station one. You know what I’m talking about Brits. There is a prize for anyone who can add a comment with this name for our Canadian readers, together with pronunciation tips!)
3 or 4 hours in and I found, perhaps, the sight I was looking for in Canada. We arrived for a break in Revelstoke, which is a national park. A small settlement on the Columbia river, which feeds from the Columbia fields glacier way up in the Rockies. Rivers, trees, snow capped mountains and sunshine. And McDonalds. My friend Scribbles says that she has her ‘somewhere else’. Well I’m not sure I do, but this for me was the place I would have chosen. I was happy that, regardless of what I was going to see for the remainder of my trip, I had experienced what I had wanted to look for. Emptiness. Scenery. Blue Skies. Fresh air. Stunning.
Our journey took us further along the trans Canada highway (which links pacific with atlantic Canada), through towns like Golden, Prospect and Canyon, which perhaps get their names from the local history of British Columbia, which filled very quickly in the late 1800s as people came for the gold rush.
The 11 hour journey was caused by a traffic jam. A blocked road. Not much scope for finding alternative roads in the mountains, so we sat there. About 90 minutes. Until it was discovered that the blockage about 7km further up the road wasn’t moving, and that we would be better served to turn around and find a diversion – see comment about alternative routes! I took photos of the jam. Stuck on the side of a mountain, it was easily the most scenic traffic jam I had ever been involved in (you cant see much from the 401, and, well, I am not sure a birds eye view of Walsall FC and the RAC control centre on the M6 counts as scenic!). People were all quite relaxed about it. This isn’t National Express, and perhaps people just accept when things don’t go quite as planned. I would be interested to write to Greyhound and see what reply I get (A14, L25, L26, Z77 probably! – Scribbles understands).
The diversion though did end up being a bonus, as I was treated to a road, and sights, I probably wasn’t supposed to get. As the sun got slightly lower, it was incredible how the drive between 2 mountain peaks could plunge the area in between into darkness – I’d never have got that at 2 in the afternoon.
I also got to experience wildlife. A black bear eating at the side of the road, and 3 deer later on. Only in Vancouver had I heard someone say all they needed to do now was see a bear. It all happened too quickly to get a picture sadly. Don’t ask me to say how big it was. Bigger than a dog! And far enough away to be no hassle! No need to say more!
Got to Banff as the sun was setting. The trouble with seeing so many nice things is the superlatives run thin, and comparisons blur somewhat. So what can I say about Banff? Its buildings are like a permanent German Christmas market, triangular pointed rooves decorated with lights. And surrounded on 3 sides by mountains. I was treated to a full moon above a mountain silhouette, with a river running underneath me as I stood observing from a bridge. Almost a proposal point for any romantics amongst you. Banff Avenue by Canada place. (I’ll stop here)
Random sign contender today was the cut out of a creature, which could have been a bear, deer or moose, but was probably a cross between the 3, with the simple word – ‘attention’. Tell you what, if I came across an animal anything like resembling that picture, that animal would get all the attention it wanted.
New category opened too. The random satellite dish award. These people are in the mountains, and need to communicate somehow, so no criticism for that. The humour is merely how big the dishes are, and what they are attached to, often with no apparent dwelling nearby. One attached to a tree about 20km from Banff currently leads in this category, but it is early days. Next stop Jasper.
18 September – Banff to Jasper
A much shorter journey, and instead of Greyhounding it, I got on a tour bus. So a couple of hundred km of journey, and a day of stops and commentary to talk about it. The journey took in Lake Louise, the Icefields Parkway, the Columbia Icefields, including a tour of the Athabasca glacier, and the Athabasca falls before ending up in Jasper. Enough talking about scenery, how good it was/looked etc. To be honest, once you have had 25 stop offs in 3 days to look at various mountain and lake formations, they all start looking the same! Which is harsh, but then again, I am not an artist, I am an uncouth city boy and I don’t know any better!
Some of the highlights of the day though:
1) By doing a tour run in a proper touristy group, you do get to pick up so much more – the driver provided commentary for the full 3+ driving hours which really made a difference, and he also had the flexibility to stop off, break, slow down, when people saw animals, wanted to take autumn pictures, or when we were simply running ahead of schedule. Very impressed. I wonder how well we do that at home by comparison.
2) I also wonder what the age gap was between me and the next youngest on my bus. I guess at no less than 10 years, and that is being generous!
3) The names of places are always interesting. The two most interesting for me though were the Bow river and the Athabasca river.
4) The Bow river takes its name as a result of the Douglas fur sapling trees which surround it. The locals used these trees to make their Bows for their bow and arrows.
5) The word Athabasca means ‘place where the reeds grow’. Unsurprisingly, there are no reeds anywhere near these mountains. However, I am reliably informed that if you follow the river all the way up to Athabasca, you will see these aforementioned reeds. I’ll take their word for it.
6) The water in the lakes around here is a fantastic blue/green like you would not believe. Turquoise doesn’t begin to cover it. I hope my photos come out. I was silly enough to ask whether it was just the effect of the sky – but apparently not. The reason is that all the water in the lakes is glacial water (ie has melted from glaciers above). As glaciers form, they erode small bits of dust and rock from the ground below, and these are compressed into the rock. The smallest particles are called ‘rock flour’ because they are like flour in consistency. Unlike most solids, they do not drop to the bottom of the lakes/rivers, they remain in the water. These particles are so small that they absorb the entire spectrum of colour as the sun shines, except for blue and green, which is reflected back. That’s the colour you see. End of science/geography lesson! (That little one is to (try and) impress Marie)
7) Walking on a glacier is a really exhilarating experience. The stats for the Athabasca glacier in the Columbia Icefields? Well it is 6 square km of ice, it is 6km long, and it is between 90m and 300m thick. I’ve no idea how many Baileys you can ice with that!
8) And in case that isn’t enough, the ice within the entire field (the field feeds the glacier) is 50 times the amount of ice on the glacier…
9) Sometimes you can just be so blown away by the views that you don’t know where to look. When you have snow peaks surrounding you on all 4 sides, it is difficult to know where to point the camera. No wonder there are so many great artists in Canada.
For a mere city boy like me, this was a truly once in a lifetime experience. I am not sure I would want to do this again. But you don’t need to. Its enough to know it is there, and to have seen it.
Animal count? Well one Elk (they told me it was an elk, and would I really know differently?! It could have been anything for all I know!). 3 deer. No bears. Oh well.
Random sign of the day? :’You are in avalanche country. http://www.avalanche.ca/’ I haven’t seen this website yet, but got to be worth a look! I am not entirely sure my wireless technology would have helped out all that much if there had been an avalanche either! Still, glad to report that I didn’t need to find this out!
Random number of the day. 77.7%. That’s the number of Germans that turned out for the general election. Good work. And yet still they couldn’t decide. By the time I post this maybe they will have worked out who is going to form a coalition with who(m). Anyone in the UK for proportional representation? Lets give Labour 35, Conservatives 35 and Liberal 25, and let them deal with each other who is going to form a government… our way is at times highly unsatisfactory, but at least once its done its done eh? The trouble with coalitions is the fall out if people, well, fall out… or maybe we should try it one day? Just to see…
19 September – Jasper to Kamloops
Jasper is actually the national park which is home to the Athabasca Glacier. The end of yesterdays trip had brought me to Jasper, and today I was staying the morning here, before leaving early afternoon to get the bus to Kamloops. It was actually mainly a way of breaking the return to Vancouver, but it was worth it.
Jasper is 100 years old (as is Alberta, its province, I believe). Happy birthday. Jasper was formed in 1905 as a settlement point on the Canadian National Railway line that was built from east to west. It ran through here, and a settlement was formed. Even today, 10% of the population work for CN.
I spent a bit of time at the railway station, which is a heritage station, with memorabilia and old locomotives dating back a hundred years. My brother in law and uncle would love it. Managed to send John a postcard of a Canadian Pacific train. Coming from a place like Peterborough (which most people have only usually heard of because they had to change trains there once..) I have developed a healthy respect for trains. Which is more than I had when I had to take them every day…
Another link with Peterborough. Well our bus driver Terry the day before was from Pboro, Ontario. Not a direct link. But there is a mountain in Jasper named the Edith Cavell mountain, after the first world war heroine. Readers from Pboro UK will understand why I mention this – for the rest of you, I shall make one of my ‘educational’ posts “who was Edith Cavell” – unless one of you wishes to enlighten people (and me for that matter!) why she was a first world war heroine?
But the time came to leave, and with it a 4 hour afternoon ride to Kamloops. The shortest Greyhound journey I had made, and the most uneventful. Having lost some of my interest in the sights after 3 days in awe of them, I even caught up with an hours sleep before getting there.
It was refreshing to see that coach drivers over here have the same capacity to scare the crap out of their passengers as their UK counterparts. As we went through a thunderstorm shortly after entering BC, while we were doing 110kmh and it was hailing down golfball sized lumps of ice, the driver came on the tannoy and said that we were experiencing some difficult weather conditions, but that he was confident through the mountain roads that he could keep going, and that he would ‘ride it out’. Whatever that means. He also added ‘fasten your seatbelts’. Which I would have done. Had there been any.
The guy sat in front of me wanted to get out early at his stop, so asked the driver
“Can I get out at the CN junction?”
“yeah…. But remind me”
“If its still raining though, don’t stop as I’ll have to walk”
“No problem. Remind me though, as I’m usually day dreaming when I go through that junction..”
I’m glad I don’t have to deal with Greyhound complaints… well, you never know. People these days have no sense of humour.
Random stat of the day. 97. That’s the number of carriages on the CN train that passed us in Vavenloy while we were at the level crossing. Perhaps someone (maybe John?!) could tell us what the max number of carriages on a goods train could be, and why. Our driver Terry the other day seemed to think that, although there are the physical limitations (ie what an engine can pull and what the couplings can hold) the length is often dictated by the distance between level crossings, as the train will not be allowed to stretch 2 at any one time… there is some homework for wannabe train spotters amongst you.
Other items of note. 2 cattle herders on horseback rounding up cows in the rain as we came in towards Kamloops. I’d only ever seen this in movies before!
Found myself a nice Irish pub to have dinner in, on the advice of the concierge in the hotel, and drank a couple of Kilkenny beers for my mums birthday (she comes from co Kilkenny in Ireland). Back to the Canadian and the Stella once I’m back in the GTA though!
20 September – Kamloops to Vancouver
A long lie in to prepare myself for the trip to Toronto that was coming, and the resulting jetlag. (I am back in work on 22nd!). Its also a farily pain free trip to Vancouver, and was wholly unexciting. I spent the entire journey talking to a woman from Denmark who came here in 1956, and was impressed, if that’s the right word, with my use of technology ( I was texting and using my lap top for pretty mundane stuff!)
I spent the afternoon in Vancouver wandering the shops, looking for a couple of buildings and staring at a ship. A boat the size of Canada Place (the Expo 86 site) came in to port, the Island Princess from Hamilton. I can see why these cruises cost so much money. The tanker brought in to help refuel the thing was smaller than the lifeboats on the side of the boat!
I managed to catch up with the Marine Building, which I had been looking for since my last visit (ie since last week!). It was built in 1930 and was at the time the largest building in the British Empire. Today, it is dwarfed by the Vancouver skyline, which, in relative North American terms, is tiny. Just shows how far we have come. ( I was interested anyway – I think this traveling thing has mellowed me somewhat!)
Vancouver itself I shall write about separately – I know, I am miles behind on posts. It is different, but definitely has some unique things. It also has a highly efficient airport with self check in, and sports TV, so the wait for the flight home should be pretty painless.
17 September – Kelowna to Banff
Another day, another bus. Bit early for my liking (8am), but it gave me the chance to be up and out by 640 am, to have spoken to my mum and sister at home, and to be prepared for another day of sights and experiences.
And it was a long experience. 11 hours. Didn’t arrive until 7, at which point I discovered that there was a Mountain Standard Time for this part of the region, and that it was actually 8!
Kelowna is actually in the heart of the Okanagan Valley and has some great views. I hear my sister’s in laws are moving out here soon. Being slightly too practical, I am not sure what they are hoping to do when they get here. But tourism is clearly high on the agenda, with winter sports available for half the year, and road trips, sailing and wine tasting some of the summer attractions.
Our agenda took us through the random name award winning Salmon Arm – presumably so named because of the fishing possibilities. (Winner of this prestigious award on day 1 was Chilliwack – to be fair though, no name in this country can be quite as weird as Shepton Mallett, Stratton on the Fosse or, well, the Welsh railway station one. You know what I’m talking about Brits. There is a prize for anyone who can add a comment with this name for our Canadian readers, together with pronunciation tips!)
3 or 4 hours in and I found, perhaps, the sight I was looking for in Canada. We arrived for a break in Revelstoke, which is a national park. A small settlement on the Columbia river, which feeds from the Columbia fields glacier way up in the Rockies. Rivers, trees, snow capped mountains and sunshine. And McDonalds. My friend Scribbles says that she has her ‘somewhere else’. Well I’m not sure I do, but this for me was the place I would have chosen. I was happy that, regardless of what I was going to see for the remainder of my trip, I had experienced what I had wanted to look for. Emptiness. Scenery. Blue Skies. Fresh air. Stunning.
Our journey took us further along the trans Canada highway (which links pacific with atlantic Canada), through towns like Golden, Prospect and Canyon, which perhaps get their names from the local history of British Columbia, which filled very quickly in the late 1800s as people came for the gold rush.
The 11 hour journey was caused by a traffic jam. A blocked road. Not much scope for finding alternative roads in the mountains, so we sat there. About 90 minutes. Until it was discovered that the blockage about 7km further up the road wasn’t moving, and that we would be better served to turn around and find a diversion – see comment about alternative routes! I took photos of the jam. Stuck on the side of a mountain, it was easily the most scenic traffic jam I had ever been involved in (you cant see much from the 401, and, well, I am not sure a birds eye view of Walsall FC and the RAC control centre on the M6 counts as scenic!). People were all quite relaxed about it. This isn’t National Express, and perhaps people just accept when things don’t go quite as planned. I would be interested to write to Greyhound and see what reply I get (A14, L25, L26, Z77 probably! – Scribbles understands).
The diversion though did end up being a bonus, as I was treated to a road, and sights, I probably wasn’t supposed to get. As the sun got slightly lower, it was incredible how the drive between 2 mountain peaks could plunge the area in between into darkness – I’d never have got that at 2 in the afternoon.
I also got to experience wildlife. A black bear eating at the side of the road, and 3 deer later on. Only in Vancouver had I heard someone say all they needed to do now was see a bear. It all happened too quickly to get a picture sadly. Don’t ask me to say how big it was. Bigger than a dog! And far enough away to be no hassle! No need to say more!
Got to Banff as the sun was setting. The trouble with seeing so many nice things is the superlatives run thin, and comparisons blur somewhat. So what can I say about Banff? Its buildings are like a permanent German Christmas market, triangular pointed rooves decorated with lights. And surrounded on 3 sides by mountains. I was treated to a full moon above a mountain silhouette, with a river running underneath me as I stood observing from a bridge. Almost a proposal point for any romantics amongst you. Banff Avenue by Canada place. (I’ll stop here)
Random sign contender today was the cut out of a creature, which could have been a bear, deer or moose, but was probably a cross between the 3, with the simple word – ‘attention’. Tell you what, if I came across an animal anything like resembling that picture, that animal would get all the attention it wanted.
New category opened too. The random satellite dish award. These people are in the mountains, and need to communicate somehow, so no criticism for that. The humour is merely how big the dishes are, and what they are attached to, often with no apparent dwelling nearby. One attached to a tree about 20km from Banff currently leads in this category, but it is early days. Next stop Jasper.
18 September – Banff to Jasper
A much shorter journey, and instead of Greyhounding it, I got on a tour bus. So a couple of hundred km of journey, and a day of stops and commentary to talk about it. The journey took in Lake Louise, the Icefields Parkway, the Columbia Icefields, including a tour of the Athabasca glacier, and the Athabasca falls before ending up in Jasper. Enough talking about scenery, how good it was/looked etc. To be honest, once you have had 25 stop offs in 3 days to look at various mountain and lake formations, they all start looking the same! Which is harsh, but then again, I am not an artist, I am an uncouth city boy and I don’t know any better!
Some of the highlights of the day though:
1) By doing a tour run in a proper touristy group, you do get to pick up so much more – the driver provided commentary for the full 3+ driving hours which really made a difference, and he also had the flexibility to stop off, break, slow down, when people saw animals, wanted to take autumn pictures, or when we were simply running ahead of schedule. Very impressed. I wonder how well we do that at home by comparison.
2) I also wonder what the age gap was between me and the next youngest on my bus. I guess at no less than 10 years, and that is being generous!
3) The names of places are always interesting. The two most interesting for me though were the Bow river and the Athabasca river.
4) The Bow river takes its name as a result of the Douglas fur sapling trees which surround it. The locals used these trees to make their Bows for their bow and arrows.
5) The word Athabasca means ‘place where the reeds grow’. Unsurprisingly, there are no reeds anywhere near these mountains. However, I am reliably informed that if you follow the river all the way up to Athabasca, you will see these aforementioned reeds. I’ll take their word for it.
6) The water in the lakes around here is a fantastic blue/green like you would not believe. Turquoise doesn’t begin to cover it. I hope my photos come out. I was silly enough to ask whether it was just the effect of the sky – but apparently not. The reason is that all the water in the lakes is glacial water (ie has melted from glaciers above). As glaciers form, they erode small bits of dust and rock from the ground below, and these are compressed into the rock. The smallest particles are called ‘rock flour’ because they are like flour in consistency. Unlike most solids, they do not drop to the bottom of the lakes/rivers, they remain in the water. These particles are so small that they absorb the entire spectrum of colour as the sun shines, except for blue and green, which is reflected back. That’s the colour you see. End of science/geography lesson! (That little one is to (try and) impress Marie)
7) Walking on a glacier is a really exhilarating experience. The stats for the Athabasca glacier in the Columbia Icefields? Well it is 6 square km of ice, it is 6km long, and it is between 90m and 300m thick. I’ve no idea how many Baileys you can ice with that!
8) And in case that isn’t enough, the ice within the entire field (the field feeds the glacier) is 50 times the amount of ice on the glacier…
9) Sometimes you can just be so blown away by the views that you don’t know where to look. When you have snow peaks surrounding you on all 4 sides, it is difficult to know where to point the camera. No wonder there are so many great artists in Canada.
For a mere city boy like me, this was a truly once in a lifetime experience. I am not sure I would want to do this again. But you don’t need to. Its enough to know it is there, and to have seen it.
Animal count? Well one Elk (they told me it was an elk, and would I really know differently?! It could have been anything for all I know!). 3 deer. No bears. Oh well.
Random sign of the day? :’You are in avalanche country. http://www.avalanche.ca/’ I haven’t seen this website yet, but got to be worth a look! I am not entirely sure my wireless technology would have helped out all that much if there had been an avalanche either! Still, glad to report that I didn’t need to find this out!
Random number of the day. 77.7%. That’s the number of Germans that turned out for the general election. Good work. And yet still they couldn’t decide. By the time I post this maybe they will have worked out who is going to form a coalition with who(m). Anyone in the UK for proportional representation? Lets give Labour 35, Conservatives 35 and Liberal 25, and let them deal with each other who is going to form a government… our way is at times highly unsatisfactory, but at least once its done its done eh? The trouble with coalitions is the fall out if people, well, fall out… or maybe we should try it one day? Just to see…
19 September – Jasper to Kamloops
Jasper is actually the national park which is home to the Athabasca Glacier. The end of yesterdays trip had brought me to Jasper, and today I was staying the morning here, before leaving early afternoon to get the bus to Kamloops. It was actually mainly a way of breaking the return to Vancouver, but it was worth it.
Jasper is 100 years old (as is Alberta, its province, I believe). Happy birthday. Jasper was formed in 1905 as a settlement point on the Canadian National Railway line that was built from east to west. It ran through here, and a settlement was formed. Even today, 10% of the population work for CN.
I spent a bit of time at the railway station, which is a heritage station, with memorabilia and old locomotives dating back a hundred years. My brother in law and uncle would love it. Managed to send John a postcard of a Canadian Pacific train. Coming from a place like Peterborough (which most people have only usually heard of because they had to change trains there once..) I have developed a healthy respect for trains. Which is more than I had when I had to take them every day…
Another link with Peterborough. Well our bus driver Terry the day before was from Pboro, Ontario. Not a direct link. But there is a mountain in Jasper named the Edith Cavell mountain, after the first world war heroine. Readers from Pboro UK will understand why I mention this – for the rest of you, I shall make one of my ‘educational’ posts “who was Edith Cavell” – unless one of you wishes to enlighten people (and me for that matter!) why she was a first world war heroine?
But the time came to leave, and with it a 4 hour afternoon ride to Kamloops. The shortest Greyhound journey I had made, and the most uneventful. Having lost some of my interest in the sights after 3 days in awe of them, I even caught up with an hours sleep before getting there.
It was refreshing to see that coach drivers over here have the same capacity to scare the crap out of their passengers as their UK counterparts. As we went through a thunderstorm shortly after entering BC, while we were doing 110kmh and it was hailing down golfball sized lumps of ice, the driver came on the tannoy and said that we were experiencing some difficult weather conditions, but that he was confident through the mountain roads that he could keep going, and that he would ‘ride it out’. Whatever that means. He also added ‘fasten your seatbelts’. Which I would have done. Had there been any.
The guy sat in front of me wanted to get out early at his stop, so asked the driver
“Can I get out at the CN junction?”
“yeah…. But remind me”
“If its still raining though, don’t stop as I’ll have to walk”
“No problem. Remind me though, as I’m usually day dreaming when I go through that junction..”
I’m glad I don’t have to deal with Greyhound complaints… well, you never know. People these days have no sense of humour.
Random stat of the day. 97. That’s the number of carriages on the CN train that passed us in Vavenloy while we were at the level crossing. Perhaps someone (maybe John?!) could tell us what the max number of carriages on a goods train could be, and why. Our driver Terry the other day seemed to think that, although there are the physical limitations (ie what an engine can pull and what the couplings can hold) the length is often dictated by the distance between level crossings, as the train will not be allowed to stretch 2 at any one time… there is some homework for wannabe train spotters amongst you.
Other items of note. 2 cattle herders on horseback rounding up cows in the rain as we came in towards Kamloops. I’d only ever seen this in movies before!
Found myself a nice Irish pub to have dinner in, on the advice of the concierge in the hotel, and drank a couple of Kilkenny beers for my mums birthday (she comes from co Kilkenny in Ireland). Back to the Canadian and the Stella once I’m back in the GTA though!
20 September – Kamloops to Vancouver
A long lie in to prepare myself for the trip to Toronto that was coming, and the resulting jetlag. (I am back in work on 22nd!). Its also a farily pain free trip to Vancouver, and was wholly unexciting. I spent the entire journey talking to a woman from Denmark who came here in 1956, and was impressed, if that’s the right word, with my use of technology ( I was texting and using my lap top for pretty mundane stuff!)
I spent the afternoon in Vancouver wandering the shops, looking for a couple of buildings and staring at a ship. A boat the size of Canada Place (the Expo 86 site) came in to port, the Island Princess from Hamilton. I can see why these cruises cost so much money. The tanker brought in to help refuel the thing was smaller than the lifeboats on the side of the boat!
I managed to catch up with the Marine Building, which I had been looking for since my last visit (ie since last week!). It was built in 1930 and was at the time the largest building in the British Empire. Today, it is dwarfed by the Vancouver skyline, which, in relative North American terms, is tiny. Just shows how far we have come. ( I was interested anyway – I think this traveling thing has mellowed me somewhat!)
Vancouver itself I shall write about separately – I know, I am miles behind on posts. It is different, but definitely has some unique things. It also has a highly efficient airport with self check in, and sports TV, so the wait for the flight home should be pretty painless.
posted by CBC at 3:16 pm
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