A night NOT in Kamloops and 4 in Canmore

Holding the steering wheel was certainly an interesting sensation as we drove away from Whistler.  All that “hanging on like grim death” to the handlebars and brakes had certainly taken its toll.  We had a fair way to drive, around 4 hours or so to Kamloops, but the guides had all said the drive would be wonderful to see and there would be little or no police along the way.

Stopping off on the road for a beautiful gluten free lunch in Revelstoke

Bear Hunting on the Ski Lift

We stopped briefly for fuel then we were off…..and the road wound on and on.  Pretty soon we were less than 150kms away and we came to a horrible realization.  The hotel we had booked was somehow about 55km out of our way.  Yup, in some weird mistake, I had booked a hotel that was in a resort called Sun Peaks.  We had to make a choice now.  Did we push on through to Sun Peaks, suck up the extra 110km and in essence 2 hours of driving, or did we plump for the ore luxurious route of dropping out cheap hotel in Sun Peaks and finding somewhere in Kamloops.

As it turns out, Kamloops had some kind of thing going on so “cheap accommodation” was not so cheap.  We stopped briefly, then decided that we’d be frugal and drive up to Sun Peaks.  The journey out there was kind of weird.  It felt almost other-worldly as we wound our way along the backroads of British Columbia.  At one point two huge owls took to the air from the side of the road and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting them.  All very strange.

I never thought I'd be so happy to see a road with only 2 lanes

Eventually we arrived and the hotel reception was unmanned.  Sun Peaks was feeling like Twin Peaks.  Then an Australian manager came down to greet us, we got up to our room and …..collapsed in bed after a much needed shower.  Wiping the grime off our bodies was bliss.

Next morning we slept in somewhat as although we had a long way to go we really wanted to just enjoy our comfy bed.  By the time we were on the road again, the sun was up high in the sky and the world around us didn’t seem quite so weird.  In fact it was beautiful – just beautiful.  From here to Canmore, our stop for the next 6 days, we had the dubious pleasure of mainly single lane highways and thank goodness Julia was driving is all I can say.  God loves the Canadians, but seriously…..do they HAVE to drive so slowly?  The speed limit is set at a ridiculous 70km/h!  That’s 45mph in real money…..are you KIDDING!?

Lake Louise in a rare moment.....all the tourists were behind us

Much gnashing of teeth later we eventually arrived at the new stretch of 2 lane road that made up the last 150 or so km before we would get to Canmore.  My goodness we were pleased to see that stretch there.

One afternoon the heavens opened and we had a full on hail storm!

The countryside on both sides of us was immense.  Just huge swathes of forested mountainsides leading steeply up to snow covered peaks that shone in the bright sunshine against a clear blue sky.  Really the stuff of postcards.  Our time in Canmore was hopefully going to be spent fishing and doing the odd small hike, with gems like Lake Louise and the Minniwanka Loop to drive around.  What a great name!  I was by now desperate to see a bear and a guy we met in the poker saloons of Vegas had been adamant that we’d see one up here.

Off to catch the bears at sunrise......fat chance

Our landlady for the next 4 nights was a lovely woman that showed us our little studio style space on the bottom floor of her house, then disappeared upstairs and left us to our own devices.  Which mainly consisted of finding any way we could to protect ourselves from the really rather aggressive mosquitos that seemed to infest the area.  Within minutes (I want to say seconds, because it certainly felt that way) we had our first bites and so Julia went into full “MacGyver” mode, erecting a very solid looking mosquito net construction over our bed.  That would save us many a sleepless night…..plus it always looks kind of romantic.

Castle Rock in the sun

Somewhere in there is the bear :)

The rest of the time we just slathered on the DEET and burned our remaining mosquito coils at the front door.  Having a full on kitchen again was lovely.  We went to the supermarket, marveling once more at a part of the world that managed to be more expensive than Sydney for groceries.  As we have travelled the USA and Canada we have been very shocked at just how expensive it is to eat non-processed and non-GMO foods.  Add “Gluten Free” to the front of a packet of pasta/cereal/bread and you can triple the price!  How the average North American family can afford to eat fresh food is beyond me as I reckon it must cost in the region of $100 a week to feed a family of 4 on good food.

Back to our trip…..so aside from being prohibitively expensive to eat and rife with killer mosquitos, Canmore is also just recovering from some pretty horrendous floods.  We knew this and as we drove into the little suburb where our house was located we saw what looked like some work to build an emergency run-off channel in case of future flooding.  How wrong we were.  It seems the face of the mountain literally slid off and came running down this channel, taking with it most of the banks of the little creek that normally ran there and undercutting a lot of the houses along the creek.  When our landlady explained this, we looked again and saw how one side of some of the houses was literally standing in thin air!  Of course as this is a holiday town and most of the houses are people’s 2^nd homes, neither their insurance nor the government’s emergency funds cover them, so some families face ruin or having to walk away from their homes.

Not quite Iguazu but still beautiful

Another after effect of the flooding was to have ruined the fishing along the waterways.  With the high water flow and slew of debris that came tumbling down the channels, fish populations were disturbed and we were not able to get a guide to take us out.  Shame.  So instead we did a few trips around the valley and spent most of our energies hunting down my bear.  We tried at Lake Louise skilift, which was apparently the best place to see them.  But unfortunately we went too late (midday).  We tried at sunset……no dice.  So we decided to wake up early to get in the car and catch a bear at sunrise……

…..and we got one, fleeting glimpse of a black bear meandering through a forested hillside.  Had it not been for a few cars parked on the side of the road we would have driven right past the creature.  What a wonderful moment to see it in the wild.

Julia attacked by horse flies at lunch

After the success of that sighting we tried again, next day, to catch a bear in the wild.  This time we left really early and were in the right places at the right time to see wildlife.  We saw NOTHING!  A few deer.  The odd bird.  Other than that?  Nada.  Zilch.  The drive home was a trifle strained as we both realized how futile the whole thing had been. 

Another day we did what we thought would be a very long drive up to Jasper; which turned out to not take that long as we were both getting better and better at overtaking the snail-paced Canadians in front of us!  As usual, British Columbia stepped up to the mark and delivered some utterly breath-taking vistas for us to enjoy, especially where we stopped for lunch by the side of the 

Our time in Canmore can best be described as a lovely break from travelling around, that somehow included quite a lot of driving around and staring at scenery.  The nature we saw there we’ll never forget, the moment of seeing the bear will stay with me forever and I would really like to think that one day we’ll get to drive up here again.

Next up on our trip was the return journey to Vancouver, via Penticton and a night with one of our friends from the cycling journey we took through Thailand/Cambodia and Vietnam.  Larry had very kindly extended the hospitality of his home to us and we were really looking forward to seeing him again.