Canadian Rockies Pictures

Canadian Rockies Pictures
These are some of the many photographs we've taken so far. They aren't in the normal day to day blog because there just isn't time to coordinate everything. Right now it's day 15 and I'm sitting in the Lone Wolf Harley shop in Spokane Valley WA waiting for a rear wheel to be installed. So, I have a little time to add these.
#1 is a staircase Doug found interesting...somewhere....

 #2 A view from th lookout at Ft. Ransom. Reached by a gravel road, of course.

 #3 Part of the road to the lookout at Ft. Ransom

#4 Dougs bike, without Doug....he was on the back seat. Hold my beer, watch this!



#5 After the storm in Bismark

#6 Sandy waiting out the storm in the office.

#7 Hundreds of temporary housing units in the non existent oil boom in North Dakota.

 #8 View from below

#9_#10 Just because they're neat

#11

Canadian Rockies Day 9

Canadian Rockies Day 9

Lake Louise.

We woke up in the moning after a reasonably good night sleep in the hotel. I decided not to make coffee in the room and wander down to the restaurant to sit and drink my coffee. Why coffee today and not tea? Don't know, just is.

After a while, Jim and Doug joined me and we ordered up some breakfast.  As usual, food was good.

Back to the room to gather up the gear and women.

We left Lake Louise Inn  at about 10 AM and headed to Lake Louise for some touristy type stuff.

Lake Louise 

 We hiked up the Mirror lake trail a bit, just to see what was there. Jim, Sandy and Doug went as far as the Mirror Lake but no further. 

It is a very beautiful area. I think though, what we will take away with us, is, how crowded it got! We had arrived early, parked and started our sightseeing. When we were ready to leave, a couple hours later, there were thousands of people and cars in the lake Luise area of the park. We had trouble getting out of the park. Cars were everywhere.

Too crowded for me.

After Lake Louise, we headed for Parsons BC. Since camping was in such short supply, we decided to stay in a BC hotel for another night. We found a bed and breakfast in Parson that had a room for 4 available for the night. We paid a little extra and squeezed Sandy into the sitting room.
When we arrived at the hotel, we were greeted with, a long gravel drive. We just can't get away from the gravel for more than a day or two. 

The home was set up with 14 guest rooms and cabins. Most all of it made, finished, or constructed by the owners. 

We had eaten dinner before we arrived at the hotel because we were going to be late. When we got there we claimed our respective rooms, showered up, then went outside to relax and admire the surroundings.

 Jim and I planned on finishing the JD begun a couple days earlier,Doug would have a beer and Pam and Sandy, sodas.When ordering a beer for Doug, the owner, Rino, talked him into a nice lager beer. Doug resisted at first but then relented. When Rino handed Doug the stein of beer, he told us, in his thick German accent, that this would help Doug drink like a German. Get exercise while he drank. Doug appeared to be having trouble with the stein. Rino left and went back to the bar. Doug looked at me and said"This is heavy! It's got to be 20 lbs." I told Doug, it's just a stein, they're a little heavier than the regular glasses.

Doug handed me the stein and I nearly dropped it. Turns out Rino had been given this as a sort of gag gift. It was a stein turned out of steel bar stock, with a steel handle welded on, then enameled to look like a stein. We all had a good laugh over this.
After most of the other guests had gone to bed Rino and his wife came out and joined us. We spent the next hour swapping stories. He has just as many as we do! We had a really good time at this B&B.
This will be edited later with additional information.

Canadian Rockies Day 7&8

Canadian Rockies Day 7&8

Wow! What a wild couple days! We have been fortunate to see such severe weather twice so far in this trip. This time we got the hail we missed in Bismark. Up to ¾ in, hail fell on us last night, along with 40-50 mile an hour winds rain by the buckets.

Today hasn't gone much better.

We woke, had the requisite tea and coffee, packed up, and headed out.We went north up Alberta 41 to Highway 3 west. The rain started right away. We stopped in Medicine Hat Harley Davidson to wait out the rain. While there we were treated to coffee, hot chocolate, tea and some friendly people. We did make a couple purchases. Neccesities only of course.  

By the time we left Harley Davidson, the rain had calmed down somewhat, but the wind had picked up tremendously.

The wind was enough to give us whiplash when it got hold of the helmets. Again, sustained winds in the 30 mph range and gusts up to 50 mph. Brutal on a bike. Normally the wind is not constant, it varies up and down with periods of calm. No calm here, if it wasn't blowing straight at us, it was blowing from the left or right. The wind was pretty steady....except when it blew harder.....which was nearly all the time. High sustained winds, gusts from  every direction, sometimes more than one direction at the same time. Very difficult to handle. The riding was so hard we stopped early at Ft. Macleod Alberta. This was home for the night. Once we got off the bikes it hit pretty hard just how much work that ride had been, A lot of pain was being felt. All of us were in the same condition. Thoroughly beat up.

It was a 3 bedroom second story apt. Nothing special, but comfortable. We split a half bottle of JD and some beers and fried chicken and tried to sleep the aches and pains away.
The next morning, it was off again
We went across 3 to Pincher where we had breakfast at Tim Hortons. Once again, the wind was ferocious. By the time we stopped for breakfast we were pretty well beat up again. We then traveled 22 north to Longview then over 541 to 40 north  to route 1 into Banff.
Although the trip to Lake Louise was long, cold and difficult, there were many things to see along the way.  This is what we were trying to get away from:

This is where we wanted to go.
 This was a bridge wash out that we detoured around by going through a creek bed.

 The road we traveled

 Some spots we stopped to investigate.




 Note my face mask. It was cold!
 
 Some of the wildlife we've encountered along the way, mountain goats.

As we often find, the scenery along the way is sometimes stunning.

We then headed on in to Lake Louise. We had planned to camp at the park camp grounds, but they were full. We managed to snag a room at the Lake Louise Inn. Had dinner at the hotel restaurant then headed for bed. Another short, but VERY long and difficult day.  

For some reason we haven't been recording daily mileage totals. We've had other things to worry about.  I will be posting a total soon.

Canadian Rockies Day 6

Canadian Rockies Day 6

This morning started normally. Tea and coffee in the camp ground, then off to start the day. We left Ft. Peck Dam and headed back on the road. We traveled to Glasgow and had breakfast at Bills Casino and Diner. Food was good and plentiful.

We left Glasgow and traveled rt. 2 all the way to Montana rt. 232 into Canada to rt. 41.

Along rt. 2 we paced a train for several miles. The train was right next to the highway doing about 62 to 65 mph. That was neat to see.  Pam waved at the engineer and he blew the horn for her. She was thrilled, of course.

On 232 through Montana we got side tracked because of some road construction. Fortunately it was only about a half mile detour. On a gravel road through some field. why us?

About 2 hours before we got to the detour sight, there had been an electrical storm in the area. It had started a few fires in the fields along the highway. 

We crossed into Canada at the border crossing. Things went smoothly through immigration.  It consisted of the border guards lightly questioning each of us, then motioning us on. We must not be on the Canadian terrorist watch list. American side may be a different story.

The ride north on 41 was a very neat ride, through some very long, lonely countryside.

We decided to stop at Elkwater provincial park for the night. This proved to be another interesting night. What's the old saying? Red sky at night Sailors delight. Supposed to be an indicator for the next day. It's not an indicator of the coming night apparently.  This is the clouds moving in. Sometime after dinner the wind picked up and the clouds started rolling in. We weren't worried about rain, the tents could handle that. A little rain is NOT what we got. Before we turned in for the night, the lightening started. It was really putting on a professional quality display. About midnight the rain started, the wind increased to a severe level, lightening was all around. We we're holding the tent walls from the inside. Then the hail started. Up to ¾ in. balls of hail were pelting us it seemed from everywhere. Pam was worried the hail would penetrate the tent. Jim was worried it might damage the bike. Jim has his priorities straight. About 10 minutes into this display of power, it tore the rain fly from the roof of my tent. At this point the rain inside is almost as bad as outside. Fortunately I had enough stuff in the tent to absorb all that water.....bedding, clothes, me. I managed to get outside and put the fly back on and prevent a flood, but not the mess. Managed to get hit by hail several times during this fiasco. Not the most fun day so far.
We did however survive, quite well actually. Just had to dry out a little.

Both Jim and Doug had a lot of water UNDER their tents, but none came in. All in all, an interesting night.

Until next time.......Mileage will be totaled soon. We're keeping a total, just not sure what it is for this leg.

Canadian Rockies Day 5

Canadian Rockies Day 5

After last nights severe storms, the morning arrived in a rather mundane fashion.  Birds, seemed like hundreds of them, actually it was probably more, but they were noisy for 5am. It started with the quiet but insistent mourning dove, then it seemed like the birds just all let loose at the same time from every direction. Maybe the mourning dove is the bird worlds version of the alarm clock? They eventually calmed down and arrived at a normal bird level of conversation. By that time we were all awake and out of the tents ready to start the day.

After a closer inspection of the tents, we found none of them with any permanent damage. They all did pretty well.  These new tents are the berries! A minute to set up, maybe two to tear down. I could get used to this.

With Pam's "First Day Calamity" out of the way, we continued our trek, heading to Fort Peck Dam in Montana..

Our ride through North Dakota took us up through the oil country near Williston ND. We have all seen the stories of the oil boom in North Dakota on the news. Oh that's right, it's

 not really being covered. Let me tell you, this place is Booming with a capital *BOOM*. Construction EVERYWHERE! Thousands of units of temporary housing, Oil wells in private fields all over the place.  .... Anyway.........

..Dougs 2050...2052.... Hundreds of trucks carrying all sorts of things in every direction. Road construction on every road in every direction. New businesses and services everywhere you look. Absolutely awesome!. Best thing? Government has NOTHING to do with it except taking their unearned share of everything.

We finally arrived at Fort Peck Dam.

  relaxing after a long drive  

Our camp site was next to a group from Washington state. They were traveling to Nova Scotia then to Ocean City City then returning to Washington via rt. 50.  and the Pacific Coast Hwy. Jim was talking to them and mentioned that they would be within a couple miles of his house when they came through Cincinnati. He invited them to camp on his property when they came through. That should be sometime in September. Could be interesting.

The spillway for the dam is 800 ft, wide and a mile long

Mileage to be totaled later.