DStilled

Oh Canada!

July 24, 2007 on 1:21 pm | In Blog |

Friday morning I woke up not knowing how close to dying I might have come (besides the fact that driving is a dangerous endeavor). We started off the day simply enough. Jeremy’s a big anthropology buff and the Canadian Northwest was one of the first jump starts for modern anthropology with the totems and everything. It was very cool and the museum had TONs of items and artifacts from around the world. It reminded me of when in Indiana Jones, Belac (the bad guy in Lost Ark) tells Indy, “You see this watch. Practically worthless, BUT bury it in the sand for 1000 years and it becomes PRICELESS.” I really was looking at random sticks and horns and small carvings that held very little monetary value when they were originally used, but today they tell stories long forgotten. Anyway, then we made our surprisingly long way through all of Vancouver to Deep Cove where we had reserved our sea kayaks. They are sea kayaks because they are a little longer and they have pedals at the feet that control the rudder. Jeremy didn’t actually know about the pedals for the first 45 minutes of kayaking. He was doing it the very had way. I say VERY hard because kayaking is HARD! I am an athletic man who loves an adventure, but this was endurance in a way I wasn’t used to. I used to run cross-country but that is easy compared to sea kayaking. We had to keep stopping for the first couple of hours to adjust our pedals and find our comfort zone just moving in the space at all. It was raining for most of the day and the water temp was low 50s. We had wetsuits but they were so light that for a few days afterward we could feel the fiberglass still in our skin. Mine was actually so tight that it imprinted a rash on my shoulders and I ripped out the butt. Our goal was to get a third of the way up the fjord and turn around in 6 hours. We stopped by a small wooded island called Raccoon Island in the middle of the seaway. The rocks we docked on were completely covered in barnacles with most cracks holding dozens of small mussels. We climbed the small granite cliffs into the woods and enjoyed ourselves. No raccoons but I didn’t really want to come across one on such a small island. After we had our fill, we had to get down from the woods and back in our boats and I decided to take a different route down. Dun dun DUNNNNN!!!!

There was a really good looking tree that hung 10 feet over the “beach” down below so I tested it out and it was really strong. All I had to do was climb about 10 feet out and the tree would bend a little and I would fall 4 feet to the ground. I started climbing hand over hand out on the tree and everything felt great. As soon as I got to the point right before I could let go and jump off safely, there was a huge CRACK!! I remember having a tremendously tight grip and thinking my feet need to hit first. But because I was in mid-swing during the last reach, my feet were slightly in front of me and the ground directly below me was still not flat. My butt hit first, a fraction of a second later my elbow took a large blow, and a fraction of a second later my head hit really hard. I never blacked out or saw stars so I immediately pushed the tree off of me and stood up. I didn’t feel woozy but I knew that I had hit the back of my head hard on sharp granite. I turned around and saw the 20 foot section of tree on the rocks and Jeremy at the top. I asked him if he saw any blood. My left arm was pretty cut up but my hair prevented the sight of blood on my head. I eventually found where it was bleeding and another spot where I bruised the top of my neck. I walk the beach like I was going to do in the first place and found a spot for Jeremy to come down more easily. Nothing was broken and the blood was flowing very slowly so we made our way back to the kayaks. We saddled up and continued down the fjord for another hour and a half before turning around. The trip back was far less eventful but more teaching oriented. I learned what perseverance really is: It’s doing the little things with heart for a long time so that the goal can be achieved. All and all, we kayaked 13 miles in 6 hours with stops. We ate pizza that night and hit the sack hard.

Saturday morning I woke up a little sore but Ibuprofen is my friend. We paid nearly $5/gallon for gas, I hit the 150,000 mile mark on my car, and we saw Glaciers for the first time (for me just first time close up). Canada’s Glacier National Park was an excellent prelude to the Rockies portion of the trip. Awesome views of mountains (not the Smokies mind you) that are averaging 10,000 ft with coniferous forests reaching as high as they can. We never saw a visitor’s center so we just drove through and ended up at Lake Louise for the night. I understand why this lake is famous and why there is a 5-star hotel/castle in front of it. This was also right at the continental divide so I’m sure that helped in the formation of the vista we saw. Louise was amazing and for the first time, it was guinuely cold at night. We stayed in a bear-proof campground. I say bear-proof because there was an electrified fence around the grounds. Did I see a bear finally!?! NO. It was nice to have a wonderful sleeping bag that I could encompass myself in though.

Sunday morning I woke up excited to be in the Canadian Rockies. We went to Banff and decided the best way to see this awesome landscape was by Gondola. No, not the boat with the singing guy in red and white. An air tram that took us to the top of a nearby mountain. We each bought something distinctly Canadian in the gift shop. We ate a quaint place in this quaint little town, soaked in the high-altitude air, and drove on our way. We went through Calgary, which has almost a million people bytheway, and figured why not use the daylight to our advantage and get closer to the border. So we found a cheap campsite about 15 minutes from the good ole US of A. After some of the best Blizzards we’ve ever had, off to bed with us.

Monday morning I woke up for the last time in Canada for maybe a long time. Sad, I know. And for the first time since Jeremy joined me, the tent wasn’t wet in the morning. Jeremy and I packed up and played a nine hole disc golf course that just happen to be right next to the campsite we were staying at. I had brought a couple just in case I found one along the way. It’s good to know that almost everything I’ve brought has been used at least in some way. Except for the gorilla tape, I’ve used pretty much everything, and that is just because need hasn’t arisen. We went through the border ok and everything. The guy wanted to look in my trunk and agreed I didn’t have any more room to bring stuff back. We drove through one of the most beautiful places on earth, America’s Glacier National Park. It had everything CA’s Glacier and Banff had but on a more vista-rich scale. I’ve been looking at maps my whole life and I never thought that Montana would be so awesome. Well, at least that big square they labeled a park. My favorite part was wandering around/on top of the waterfalls. The rock was really cool and varied in color. Like I said, I’ve been looking at maps my whole life and I never realized how thin the Rockies were. I always pictured them being hundreds of miles wide never ending in majesty. Today we drove from plains, through the width of the Rockies, and now are in plains again. I would be willing to guess that the average width of the ridge is less than 100 miles wide. Jeremy and I decided to change our road trip in order to see more (I KNOW!!) so we are pushing the agenda a tad and will now also include Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. They are kinda on the way and Jeremy’s never been so we might as well. We kept driving until 1:30 am because we really wanted a motel and pretty much everything within 90 miles of Yellowstone was booked or over 100 bucks. We eventually found a “decent” deal and took it. I’m sure I’ll talk to some of you soon now that I have USA phone service once again.