Two weeks in Canada and I have already seen so many amazing places. And I still have 6 weeks to go! I am going to wait a few more days to decide for sure but I believe I will be shortening some planned stops in Saskatchewan, and taking others off the to-do list completely, due to air quality from wildfire smoke in that province. I check the numbers every day, and they do fluctuate, but if they are anything other than low risk to my health I will probably pass.
The good news is that it will give me more time to revisit southwest British Columbia to do more things and revisit some of the places I’ve already been to. I didn’t budget enough time initially so now I’ll get another bite at the apple.
As I write this I am in Golden, BC, sitting at 3,303.33 feet elevation in the kitchen/dining area of the travel camper I am staying in for 6 nights.
I am near the base of a mountain north of Golden but it only takes me a few minutes to get down to the highway. The property is at the end of a dead-end road so it is remote and extremely quiet. The only thing I would change about it would be to put a huge net over it to keep the mosquitoes out! Not much my Airbnb host can do about that…
My first impressions of western Canada are all positive, mosquitoes notwithstanding. This is my first encounter with the pesky little insects this trip, but while I am out and about they really haven’t been a problem until this particular location.
People drive pretty fast in Canada, except people in RV’s who insist on driving the exact speed limit (or slower on inclines) and invariably have long queues behind them until they get to a passing zone. Can’t fault them for obeying the speed limit, though. Cities and towns have speed limits of 30, 40 or 50 km/h and the highways are generally 60 (in places with lots of curves), 80, 90 or 100 km/h, and the wide open road is often 110km/h. In National Parks the speed limit is never higher than 90 km/h, and in areas where people stop for viewpoints or to cross the road, much slower.
30km/h equates to 18.6 mph, 40 = 24.8, 50 = 31.1, 60 = 37.3, 70 = 43.5, 80 = 49.7, 90 = 55.9, 100 = 62.1, and top speed of 110 = 68.4 mph
So slower overall than we are used to in the US. I generally set my cruise control to around 5 or 6 km/h over the current limit and that keeps me pretty much in the regular flow of traffic. I finally switched my speedometer to metric because the conversions were driving me crazy. I had a cheat-sheet in my other car when I went to eastern Canada in 2019.
The roads have been in excellent condition, save for one I drove on my first day in-country which made me almost seasick. Fortunately that was the exception, not the rule. They may get a little worse the further north I go but I’ll just have to wait and see.
Drivers are very polite and there doesn’t seem to be any road rage up here.
The weather has been fantastic. The days often require only a t-shirt and shorts but the mornings and evenings cool down quite a bit so I may start and end the day with long pants and a sweatshirt, or at least a long-sleeved t-shirt. Now that I’m in the Canadian Rockies I wear long pants all the time but have layers for my upper body. Yesterday I was up at 6,300 feet elevation but mid-day it was very pleasant.
Thus far I have only traveled through the southern part of British Columbia, and now in Golden. I will be spending a few days in Alberta province starting in three days when I go down to Banff for 4 nights, and Calgary for one or two. I will then head further east to western Saskatchewan province, though as I mentioned above, some of those stops will likely be shortened or eliminated.
British Columbia badly needs rain but the Canadian Rockies have had a good bit so far this summer. East of the Rockies has also been dry, which is why they are having so many wildfires.
The scenery has been stunning. I am going to run out of superlatives to describe it. While planning this trip I noticed that the Canadian Rockies “weren’t that tall”. The highest points in the British Columbia and Alberta provinces are “only” 12,972 and 12,294 feet respectively. Colorado alone has 58 mountains taller than 14,000 feet. Well, now that I am here and looking at them with my own two eyes, I can say that the mountains in the Canadian Rockies, and elsewhere in western Canada that I have been to so far, are VERY IMPRESSIVE and many of them are unlike mountains I have seen elsewhere. I’ve taken lots of photos in the 6 National Parks I have been to, all within 4 hours of where I am now staying. I am staying “home” today to do laundry, wash my car, and download and review the photos I have taken the last few days and prep them for making additional posts.
Here is a tease of a Park I drove through yesterday:
Lots more where that came from, I assure you.
I haven’t seen nearly as many critters in these first two weeks as I expected to. I am always vigilant, especially when I am driving, and try to always have my digital camera within easy reach. I’ve only seen one black bear, a cub which ran across the road well ahead of me while I was in northeast Vancouver Island. I neglected to mention that in the post for that day. I saw a white-tail deer here in Golden, as I was driving down to the highway yesterday morning. It ran alongside the road to my left for a short distance and then stopped. I saw a moose cow (adult female) grazing just off the small road I was taking to get to a popular resort near Jasper, BC two days ago. I saw a herd of elk (thank you to my brother Steve for correcting me when I called them moose). I hadn’t looked at the photos on my computer yet and as you will see when I post the photos from Jasper they were all laying down and resting in a burnt-out wooded area just off a major highway, and just outside of town, so it wasn’t obvious exactly what they were. I have photos of a few birds of prey I have seen in various places. I am going to a Wolf Center just outside of Golden later this afternoon but that won’t count since they are in captivity.
I see warning signs for lots of things – deer, elk, bear (black and grizzly), moose, bison, mountain goats, and bighorn sheep (I still think they’re extinct – I have never had a confirmed sighting in all my travels in the US and now Canada). And yesterday I saw signs warning of frogs and salamanders on the road in a National Park west of here! I hope they’re not big enough to damage my car!!
No lions or tigers but they may be in Saskatchewan. I’ve heard they’re a pretty tough bunch over there…
I’ve driven just under 2,800 miles from when I crossed into Canada back on July 27 to last night when I filled my tank here in Golden. Gas prices are relatively high in Washington State and here in British Columbia. I expect them to drop in Alberta (once I get past Banff) and Saskatchewan provinces.
One thing I really like about traveling up here is that there are warning signs when you are about to go a considerable distance with no gas stations along the way. And there is no cell phone service across vast areas. Some days I go almost the whole day with no cell service. Verizon does make satellite texting for emergencies available when there is no cell service. If I start the day using Google Maps guidance on my smartphone for a specific destination it will work for quite a while but eventually stops if I’ve had no cell service for an extended period. This is why, for years, I’ve had a stand-alone GPS unit in my car. Even my new-to-me car doesn’t have a navigation system or GPS built in. Google Maps doesn’t always work.
I haven’t experienced any really bad crowds yet, but then I didn’t go into Vancouver or to a popular Garden destination in Victoria which probably would have been packed with people. The National Parks are so big it is fairly easy to get around within them, though at some of the popular stopping points the parking lots fill up pretty quickly, same as they do in the US. I do expect the city of Banff to be crowded, and I don’t know yet how many of the areas within the Park itself I can drive to. Jasper and Banff National Parks are both enormous, though some portions of Jasper are still closed due to the devastating wildfire they had last summer. I will give more specifics when I start posting photos from with each Park.
I was delighted to hear upon my arrival at the first National Park, where I planned to buy my senior annual pass, like I had in eastern Canada, that admission to all Canadian National Parks is free until September 2. Yay!
I feel like I’m forgetting something but when I think of it I’ll add it to another post.
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