Banff and Beyond

First I’d like to once again say thanks to my family for coming out
and I hope they had a good time. I’d also like to say thank you to our
other guests and hope they had a good time too. Banff is a cool place to
see, good for a few days poking around once in a while and I definitely
prefer the off season without the crowds.

Banff from Sulphur Mountain

The drive through the mountain passes was cool. It is neat to watch the
precipitation change from rain to snow and back to rain with the
changing altitudes.

The Okanogan Valley is long, and warm. It would probably be a better
place to visit in the summer - except for the crowds. It’s interesting
to me that there is a huge concentration of Canadian wineries towards
the south but only a scattering across the imaginary line that is the US
border. Yeah we bought a case of not good but awesome fruit wines from
the Forbidden Fruit winery. If you’re not jealous it is simply because
you don’t know any better.

Washington State didn’t look any different from BC really and then it
got dark. We had no trouble finding our friend’s place in the Seattle
area thanks to our handy dandy TomTom. Thanks again M&M for hosting us
in your lovely home we have a great visit. One of the great benefits of
having friends to stay with in a new area is it allows you to mix in
some real life experiences with the tourist trap stuff.

We did do some tourist stuff like Pike’s Place market where I got to
witness a drug bust in the public washroom and see other drug addicts be
forcefully told that they have to stay on the other side of the street
from the touristy part. I also bought and ate some great cheese there.

We also did some geocaching on the park trails. 

Geocaching on a chilly day

We actually had two days of sunny while we were in the greater Seattle metropolitan area. We had great weather our whole trip really.

Cross country

I started my big trip alone, heading out to Western Canada to get
married. Due to an expired passport and a Wawa washout I ended up taking
the ultra-long Arctic circle route. This added about 8 hours of driving
time to my trip but as a silver lining I got to visit with a long-time
friend and his growing family.

The drive from central to western Canada was interesting. Northern
Ontario was flatter with more working farms than I expected. I've
always pictured it as Canadian Shield covered in Evergreens not that
there wasn't a lot of that too. My most vivid memory was the warning
sign along the highway that I was approaching the last McDonald's for 510
kms (gasp!).

Nipigon is a beautiful area and I would definitely like to canoe it
someday. After Nipigon was a long stretch of highway north of Superior
that I bicycled in my cross Canada trip of 2008. Zooming by in an
auto mobile is very different than bicycle speed. My memory of north of
Superior on bicycle is that it was long and hard and repetitive – the
one section of the ride I just wanted to get over with. But now that
I've got both perspectives I’d have to say bicycling was better.
On a bicycle you have the time to appreciate where you are and what you
are doing. Highway speed doesn't really allow for that.

Manitoba was much as I remembered it - rough roads. It’s main
distinction on this trip was the the massive amount of road killed deer
(at least until I hit Wisconsin) – one of those was being eaten by a
bald eagle. Bald eagles are big birds.

I didn't see much of Saskatchewan as it was pretty much covered in
fog or darkness. Creepily like the deer respected the Manitoba
provincial boundaries the fog respected those of Saskatchewan - and the
cold Alberta.

Alberta was cold and snowy. It was the coldest and snowiest
jurisdiction of the whole trip. It also had the best beer. And I got
married there.