Banff
25 June 2018
Detour!
I love Canadian signs
When I woke up, the sun was shining, there were shadows of trees on my tent, and the birds were singing. Then, the light slowly faded to gray, and I got a text from Dad:
“By the radar it looks as if you will be having more rain this morning”
It was about that time I heard distant thunder, and decided to sit in the tent just a little longer. Sure enough, within 10 minutes I had a full blown thunderstorm raging outside the tent. What better time to catch a little more sleep?
Once the storm went on its rumbly way, I climbed out of the tent and began packing up my tent that had been dry only minutes before.
Within an hour or so, I was on the road. Having gassed up the night before, I went through Radium Hot Springs and got onto the Kootenay National Park road toward McLeod Campground and beyond. This road winds its way through Kootenay National Park, with a variety of different pullouts for different features along the way. One of the compromises of riding a bike is that there were a bunch of these I couldn’t stop at since the hikes were more than a few minutes away from the parking lot. I could certainly hike out to the interesting features, but I’m always nervous about bears and especially minibears getting at my stuff.
I did stop though at the Marble Canyon. Its a place a long long time ago where two glaciers were near each other, with one higher up the side of the mountain than the other. When the upper one melted, it did so in just such a way that it carved out a small canyon in the limestone below. This canyon got deeper as the millenia wore on and now the canyon is surprisingly deep. They have a trail from the parking lot that wanders up and crosses the canyon in a couple places. Eventually it gets deep enough to where you really have to squint to see the water in the canyon below.
Eventually I made my way out of Kootenay National Park and down to the town of Banff. I’d never been there before, so I figured I should at least check it out. Also I was hungry. One of the advantages of a bike in this case is that parking is super easy; just have to find the end of a block or a place where a couple of cars have parked pretty far apart and back in. I looked at google maps to see what was around, one caught my eye: Wild Flour Bakery. They had coffee, and I like tasty baked goods. I walked over and had probably the best latte I’ve ever had, as well as a “gourmet grilled cheese,” which consisted of some kind of homemade bread that was a little like ciabatta, arugula, granny smith apples, dijon mustard, and a cheese that was much like brie (but I don’t htink it was ). Yep, I’ll be going back there again.
My next order of business today was to ship a few things home that I didn’t think I’d use. Like an extra bag of coffee, my kindle (who has time to read out here?), some socks that ended up being too short for my boots, some knee pads that were redundant, and probably something else I can’t remember right now. Anyway, the nearest UPS store was in Canmore, just down the Trans Canada Highway from Banff. I made my down there and they helped me load all my stuff into the smallest box it would fit in, fill out the customs sheet, and get it on its way. Hooray for more space in my boxes!
Next, I was thinking about my front forks. The left one was still leaking, and it probably wasn’t going to stop. I had asked in Kalispell if the shop there would be able to get me in, and it wasn’t anytime soon. The roads were only going to get more remote and rougher from here on out, and I wasn’t far from Calgary, the last decent sized city until I get to Fairbanks, AK in about 2000 miles. I called up both Kawasaki dealers in Calgary, both gave me the same answer - maybe late next week, or the week after. They have a long weekend coming up and apparently everyone is trying to get their service squeezed in, no time for people on the road.
But, Blackfoot, the second dealer I called, suggested I give Old Motorcycle Shop a ring and see if they could help. So, I did, and they said if I was there first thing the next morning, they’d get me on the road. Nice!
I just needed to get to Calgary, and find a place to stay. I looked at Google Maps and Campendium, not a whole lot of convenient RV parks nearby. And, I hadn’t showered in a couple of days, which is normally fine if I’m just rolling down the road, but I was going to be standing around a shop trying to get people to help me, so maybe a shower would be a good idea. I looked on hotels.com and found that the University of Calgary runs a hotel out of their dorms in the summer - $53 CAD and I would have my own room with a bathroom. Thats roughly $40 US. Perfect.
After a short slog down the TransCan highway, which feels like an interstate in the US, I was at the University of Calgary. 30 minutes later, I was in my very own dorm room. It was really pretty nice, fairly new, clean, and most importantly - super fast internet. Faster than home fast. What better time than to upload all of my pictures so far to flickr?