Mountains

Before I start - google maps stopped liking me when we reached BC. Routes are a little messed, may have to do with connections.

Updating we found a name for the van - Dana has been calling her Little Miss Sunshine, I think it's perfect.

The trip from North Battleford to Hinton Alberta was relatively uneventful. One stop for gas and we found at least two gas stations completely out of gas - a result of a refinery fire. This would plague us right across the provinces and into BC a bit as well. Hinton was a bit of a surprise, very picturesque view, dropping out of the foothills into the town. A little driving around here and we found the centre hub where we did our usual shopping around the little stores and topping up the grocery supplies. There is not much room in our little fridge so we tend to only put in a day’s supply of food. It was late in the day but everyone wanted to travel on into Jasper.

We started looking for a campsite soon after getting into the park and discovered a campsite with sites available, interestingly enough we are happy to camp either in a tent zone or an RV site, it really doesn't matter and it is do-able with a small camper van. Driving into Pocohontas campground we also discovered a bonus - Hot Springs available 15km further into the mountains at Miette. This is a small campground deep in bear country and it sort of scared us a bit. Once we settled in to the campsite, taking care to put all food items out of reach to comply with the Bare campsite rules to make sure no bears visited us, we drove the 15k to Miette. Wow - this was our first encounter in the van with actual mountain roads. The up down narrow road switch backs meeting other larger campers with trailers attempting this was an experience we knew was only the beginning of the mountain journey ahead of us to Vancouver. We stopped at one breathtaking spot and took lots of pictures of us and mountain peaks and valleys.

Once at the hot springs I decided to wait it out with Jess in the cafe, gift shop and talk to the owner of the shop who had been there at least 15 years. Dana and Merv enjoyed the pool and I took pictures all around. The temperature of the pool was about 34 and the surrounding air was about 10 - chilly. After the dip we all agreed that food was happening right on this mountain at a log cabin restaurant with home baked pizza. We gorged on pizza, chicken alfredo, texas size basket of garlic bread and talked with the waitress. She was from Australia and was trying to get used to the proximity of the wildlife in the area herself. When asked how long she'd been here - three weeks was her amusing reply. The trek back to the campsite of course was now even more exciting with darkness and fog thrown in for some seat clenching entertainment, although it did seem to go faster on the way back (maybe more downhill than uphill this time).

Next morning we were all up early after a relatively sleepless night for no reason other than maybe the BEAR threats, and on the road for Radium Hot Springs. We have big dreams in our little van but she's proving to be the "little engine that could" in every way.

We had many stops along the way including a great stop in Jasper (the town) where all the buildings were trimmed in wood and nothing was more than 2 stories tall. The next astounding stop of mention has to be the ice-fields of the Athabasca Glacier. There was a long climb to the tip of the glacier and a roped area framed by plaques’ with stories of unfortunate souls who hadn't heeded these and met with an untimely fate and other stories of how long rescue takes when you fall into a crevasse - we pondered these warnings - then joined the 50 or so other people to say we actually set foot on a glacier. Fool-hardy yes, adrenalin pumping definitely and I have pictures to prove it. I might add here that there was a raging icy river running under the tip of the glacier where we needed to jump to from a little mud covered rock that was also surrounded by shoe sucking mud, just to give a clearer picture.

That was hard to top for excitement the rest of the way through the mountains but we tried. A few more breathtaking views from precipitous perches thousands of feet from the floor of the valley we continued to climb to about 3045 mtrs and then - you guessed it - we started going down, then up, then down etc etc. Occasionally there were small traffic jams of travellers stepping out of their cars, trucks, campers taking pictures of bears or elk on the roadside, oblivious to the signs that suggest they stay in their vehicles. These of course were the same ones stepping onto the glacier - we did heed the warnings of these signs. The thought of being chewed or gored seemed more real than falling into chilling icy water and not being rescued for hours - go figure. Speaking of being gored (or gouged) we stopped at a midway point restaurant gas bar near Rocky Mountain House and nearly went broke on coffee, tea and gas - half a tank. Although not unexpected, the actual cost was leaving us gasping. 75$ lighter we wondered when or if this was going to get better.

Will update Lake Louise, Banff, Kamloops, Vancouver later today or Friday.