Canada
24 June 2018
To the land of Maple leafs, hockey and snow, eh!
After packing up once again (slowly getting faster at this!), I left Kalispell behind and went on to Whitefish. I had a particular bakery in mind, but when I got there, it was the crepery that caught my eye. I hadn’t seen one of those for a while, you don’t see them much outside of France. So I stepped in and sure enough, they had exactly what I needed: coffee, and a crepe they called the Darth Crepe - cheddar, bacon, jalapeno, and egg. In a crepe. It was everything I wanted it to be.
Next it was time to face my fears and make for the Canadian border. The drive from Whitefish to Rooville is really pretty, but there was quite a bit of traffic. I hadn’t filled up on gas yet, so I was mentally figuring the math for how far I could go. Last time I hit reserve was in South Dakota, at 175 miles. But, I was getting about 45 mpg at that time due to the wind and being on the interstate. Here the speed was slower, and there was less wind, so I figured I should be at least okay to Eureka, the last town before the border.
Just outside of Eureka, I saw a gas station and pulled in figuring I could fill up and be set for the day. I went to put my card in the pump annnd…. its dead. Completely off, no display, no lights, nothing. I look around, there’s people waiting around, and a sign on the door - “Sorry, closed due to power failure.” Huh. So I kept going into Eureka, all of the stations with their LED signs were also off, and people were waiting for gas. I re-ran the math, and figured that even if I hit reserve at the border, there was a station on the other side about 10 miles that I could get gas at, so onward to the border I went.
I think this worked to my advantage. According to the internet, at peak times, the wait at this border to get into Canada can be 3 to 4 hours. They didn’t say what peak times were, but I assume we wouldn’t be far from one with the summer vacation season winding up and lots of people heading north. But, I think most of those people were sitting at a pump in Eureka. Lucky me for filling up on the other side of Glacier! One thing that was kind of interesting is that the US side of the border was way more imposing. You could mistake the Canadian side for a toll booth, but the US side had many cameras and radiation detectors, as long as a big building to drive through. I did check, border guards are still not allowed to have a sense of humor, and bear spray definitely does not count as a weapon as long as it is labelled for use on bears. I’m not sure what would have happened had it been regular pepper spray. All in all, I was through the border in 30 minutes, what a relief.
Free of the border, I rode forth into Canada. I never hit reserve on fuel, but I stopped at the first store I could, the Grasmere General Store. There wasn’t much there. except 2 of the old gas pumps with the mechanical meter and the big switch on the side. After talking to the gentleman inside, the pump worked fine, and the price seemed reasonable. When I went back in I told him he might be getting some more business today with the town on the other side of the border being out of order. He replied that he was thinking about just shutting down and going to have a nap. This was also where I heard my first Canadian “eh!” of the trip. At least the stereotype wasn’t wrong.
From there onward it was nothing but grand vistas and sweeping roads. I rode up alongside the rocky mountains to Radium Hot Springs, past Columbia Lake (the headwaters of the mighty Columbia River) and a whole bunch of small towns with cool names like Skoocumchuck, Windermere and Invermere.
Once in Radium Hot Springs, I stopped at the gas station ATM and got some Canadian Pesos (Heard a Canadian say it! Its okay!), then wandered over to the grocery store and bought some food for dinner. After looking at the map and the internet (protip: AT&T Prepaid accounts from the US also work in Canada!), I set my sights on McLeoud Campsite in Kooteney National Park. I hopped on the bike, bought a pass at the little kiosk in the middle of the road, and was off. The drive to the campsite was fantastic, with lots of pretty mountain views and warning signs about wildlife on the road (although I didn’t see any). When I got to the campsite, I wandered around a bit to make sure I really wanted to stay there. One of the most important things for a successful motorcycle camping trip in bear country is boxes for food storage. In the US, they have them at almost every campsite. Here they have a centralized bank of lockers, and in this case it was inside a little cinder block house. Well, the house was a long way from the campsite, the striker plate holding the door closed was hanging on by a single screw, and the whole place was swarming with mosquitos. It didn’t seem like a place I really wanted to stay; a little too post-apocalyptic feeling for me.
Back on the road I went, returning to Radium Hot Springs, and along the way I saw someone in a broken dodge durango parked just passed the crest of the hill, partly on the shoulder, partly on the driving lane. And then a little further up there was a guy pulling a U-haul trailer with a sheet hanging out the back and the door open, and then there were household goods littered all over the road on the way back to town. Is Canada always this chaotic? It seemed like a good time to get off the road for the day.
Back at Radium Hot Springs, I did a little more internet reading and it turns out that the closest campsite in Kooteney National Park, Redstreak, is just up the hill from town, has fewer mosquitos, and a functional bear locker. Only downside, they gave me a “walk-in” campsite, which really should have been a “walk-up” campsite since I had to drag all my stuff up a hill from where I got to park. It doesn’t help that I probably have too much stuff.
After murdering more mosquitos (Have I mentioned how slow Canadian mosquitos are?) and making a nice dinner of canned chili + canned tomatoes + cheddar goldfish (its pretty good!), I took a little ride to see how much more of Radium Hot Springs the town there was (not a whole lot).
Back at camp, I retired to the tent and watched the sun go down through the screen, where the mosquitos couldn’t get me.