Dan's Travel Adventures

Following a rest day in Banff. Alberta, we enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and pack up. Banff is surrounded in natural beauty, and had our rest day dawned with better weather, we may have seen more of it. As it was, we took from it the pieces we could enjoy in a touristy, commercial town. Good food, some good walks and people watching.

We head north, hoping to sample 1A – the side road along the highway, but it is temporarily closed. We hypothesize it’s snow related, as it has been unusually cold, and we heard rumblings that Jasper had snow. Tony has been preaching a “no problem” attitude to help calm the intensity I sometimes present, but this is an easy adjustment, and we are shortly getting off to visit Lake Louise. Lake Louise is glacier-fed, and is the most serene light blue opaque color. It is surrounded by peaks, and it’s a sight to behold.

Exiting Lake Louise, we pick up 93, and head for Jasper. Jasper is much more our speed than Banff. It’s buildings are lower and less glitzy, its people more eclectic, and the views from anywhere in town seem impossible.

We stop for a great lunch, and manage to make yet another waitperson laugh uncomfortably when Tony breaks out his Magic Bullet blender and pouches of potions. Mitch and I order food, and try to be generous to a young person not sure what to make of it all. Nonetheless, Tony is living proof that living right pays dividends.

Back to 93, after Jasper. 93 is a highway, but it runs about 140 miles through the heart of the Canadian Rockies. It’s hard to fathom what that means – 140 miles of the most breathtaking views. Mountains that are so close, they seem to rise up out of the roadway ahead. Glacial lakes and ice fields just off the road. We are immersed in experiencing these enormous bodies, over and over, mile after mile. Formed some 80-55 million years ago (with rock estimated at over a billion years old), they are jagged from glaciers, and still very snowy, owing to their height. Contained within this stretch is perhaps the most beautiful 100 miles I have ever seen. The road is not a challenge in any way, except it is difficult to focus on riding, with your head on a swivel, and your vocabulary reduced to repetitions of “WOW”.

Eventually, the ground levels out and we turn to run on the slopes alongside this range. We turn onto highway 40, near Hinton, but not before capturing a perfect sign.

Tonight, we sleep in Grand Cache, a town created to exploit coal mines in the area. At the hotel, we are offered booties to cover our boots in case they may contain coal dust or mud, but we decline.

We have a few days of riding to reach Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon Territory, where we will swap tires for more aggressive dirt-oriented treads. The last few days have included Bighorn National Forest, Glacier National Park and Jasper National Park. Hard to imagine better motorcycling days than these. Day miles: 314 Total miles: 3720