Oh, Canada!

After 4 months in the USA for Luke and 2 for Jelley, it was strange to be entering a new country again. We thought Canada would be a lot like the USA , surely it couldn’t be too different being so close and for the majority, speaking the same language? We were excited to see what lay ahead for us.

Crossing into Canada over the land border crossing just north of Seattle was a fairly easy process, although we did momentarily forget that it might look a little suspicious travelling together on different passports! A few simple questions and we were driving on through, instantly noticing the difference in the road signs from ‘instructive’ in the US to ‘informative’ in Canada.

The combination of spending the majority of the 2 weeks prior in cities, not having any direct contacts in Vancouver and being on time and money constraints at this late stage in our travels, we made the difficult decision to bypass the city on this trip and save it for another visit (got to have something to come back for right?). It was a beautiful drive at sunset around the outskirts of Vancouver up to a well-known town, Squamish, where we planned on spending the next couple of days hiking and exploring the area.

Many things worked in our favour throughout our travels, and Squamish was no exception! We parked up at the community campsite, part of the Squamish town’s recreation centre, and found out we would be staying for the very last 2 nights of the season for the campground closed for the season! Being a local campsite, we also had access to the amazing rec centre facilities, including wifi, a gymnasium, table tennis, pool tables, and the town’s ice skating rink!

While we had been blessed with relatively good weather up until this point in our travels, the rain finally caught up with us in Squamish, and it poured. Just like the West Coast of NZ, you couldn’t have the lush, green environment without a solid regular dose of heavy rain! It was a welcome surprise when the clouds shifted slightly and we could see the incredible mountains surrounding us! While we were disappointed to miss the opportunity to do several hikes in the area, we certainly managed to turn this experience into a positive, visiting a local brewery, catching up on important life admin at the local library, and partaking in the Canadian past time of ice skating! Squamish was a relaxing stop on the road, and we met some exceptionally helpful and friendly locals while here, including a cute older woman who was proudly wearing her volunteer jacket from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics! (the inner Olympic nerd in Jelley loved chatting about her experiences during Games time).

The rain may have slowed, but the looming clouds were still pretty discouraging. Regardless, it was time to move on with our travels and begin the journey through British Columbia to Alberta. Since we hadn’t stretched our legs in a few days, we thought the 6-8 hour Garibaldi Lakes hike would be a welcome challenge! The track itself was painful to say the least. 2 hours of switchbacks climbing 800m in elevation, with no signs of stopping. Eventually we reached the top at 1450m, and enjoyed another couple of hours on a relatively flat track through the forest and around lakes before we reached the end goal, Garibaldi Lake! The stunning blue glacial waters were unbelievable (surely this was an Instagram filter haha) and we were stoked to reach the results once we arrived at the lake. We’ll let the pictures do the talking on this one, but seriously, it was amazing!!! Although painful (and also a painful realization at how out of shape we really were after 5 months travelling), it was absolutely worth it for these epic views!

Speaking of wearing all of our clothes, after a week on the road we were a little overdue for a shower and laundry, and came across a cute town amongst the mountains called Pemberton. With a brand new community centre including a library and hot showers, this was the perfect spot to catch up on basic life admin and cleanliness, visit the laundromat and plan the next few days of our trip.

It looked to be about 10 hours of nonstop driving from Pemberton to Banff, and we didn’t immediately notice any of points of interest on the road there and planned to boost it and drive all day to get to the next beautiful spot. This was a massive oversight. There was no way we could drive for 10 hours straight, and not stop at Jofree Lakes, Glacial National Park of Canada, and take in the stunning scenery of the Rocky Mountain ranges on the way. We were absolutely blown away by the enormity of the mountain ranges and how damn beautiful it was! At times, the road followed the tracks of the famous Rocky Mountaineer train journey, and it was easy to see why this is a bucket list destination for many people.

After a full day of driving and stops along the way, we pulled over at Steelhead Provincial Park for a lakefront camping spot in an area that looked remarkably like Lake Hayes in the South Island of NZ.

With a long day of driving ahead again to get to Banff, we stopped at Canada’s quintessential coffee shop, Tim Hortons, took a pit stop in Glacier National Park, enjoyed a walk in Hemlock Grove, and got caught in some serious roadwork delays. Travelling in shoulder season often means emptier campgrounds and less traffic on the road, but it also is the ideal time for the roads to be repaired. We rocked up to the town of Lake Louise just as the sun was setting and found our campsite, the furtherest distance possible from the entrance! There was around an hour of despair as Luke was concerned Jelley had succumbed to a grizzly bear, and Jel was terrified wandering around the campground, but eventually we cooked up dinner and slept inside the van in fear of being gobbled up.

Lake Louise is an iconic tourist spot in Canada, and for good reason. Throughout our travels in Canada so far, we had been enjoying the empty campgrounds and lack of foreign tourists, so we were surprised to hear that the carpark at Lake Louise was still filling by 9am, and up at Lake Moraine, full by 6.30am. We were also a little surprised by the change in time difference and it was midday before we had a coffee and made it on the shuttle bus system to get to the lake.

There were coach-loads of tourists arriving to take the ‘perfect selfie’, but once we sifted through the crowd, the lake was absolutely stunning. The beautiful blue of the water complimented by the surrounding mountains and glacier in the distance made it postcard perfect. The historic Fairmont Hotel was another must-visit – it was great reading about the original tourists in the 1920s and learning about the architecture in the region. Thanks to a little bit of Instagram research before we arrived, we had our hearts set on kayaking on Lake Louise. Unfortunately though, the cost of hiring a kayak was $100 (how?!) for 30 mins and our budget wasn’t quite generous enough to allow for this. Maybe another time!

Sleeping in the van again in -4 degrees Celsius wasn’t too enjoyable, and we treated ourselves to buying a beanie and gloves in the morning. We still couldn’t grasp the concept that our 12 months of straight summer was finally coming to an end!

Banff town is home to many beautiful walks itself, and we took a stroll along the beautiful river, taking in the fall colours and exploring a historic cave site, where visitors in the 1920s would bathe in the natural geothermal springs.

Sad to leave Banff and to be heading back towards the USA but conscious of time constraints, we drove to Calgary on our way to the final stop in Canada, Waterton Lakes National Park! Once we left Banff National Park we were struck by a drastic change in landscape, leaving gorgeous mountains and lakes for the flat prairies, which fill much of the central part of North America. These plains were flat and dry, and Calgary stuck out like a metropolis surrounding by ‘nothing’.

After a long drive, we began to notice snow! Not just a sprinkle, but a lot of it, covering the fields and getting thicker as we continued south to the border. The mountains then emerged in the distance, and we were close to Waterton Lakes National Park. One of Luke’s good friends, Jackson had suggested this stop as one of the most beautiful places he had been, so we were really looking forward to staying here. Waterton Lakes is unique in that it is along the Canda/USA border, and is the Canadian side of the USA’s own Glacier National Park (confusing right!).

We were greeted a herd of caribou, looking startled and crossing the road as we entered the park at sunset. When we reached the small town inside the park, we were confused to find almost every building boarded up, with ‘thank you firefighters’ signs all around and it felt like a ghost town, no one around. Assuming the local businesses must have closed up for the season, we found the one open establishment to get a beer, Waterton Lakes Lodge. The bartender filled us in on the current state of the town. Just 3 weeks earlier, the entire town was evacuated as the park was engulfed with a large forest fire started by lightning, which claimed over one third of this stunning national park. The ghost town feel and signs now made sense, and when we woke up to explore, we recognized just how close the fire came to devastating all of the buildings – the firefighters had managed to just save the town by a whisker, the visitor centre being the only visible sign of building damage.

The scars of the fire hadn’t tarnished the beauty of Waterton Lakes, and we would love to visit again in the future to see how the rebuild goes!

The freezing cold gail force winds we encountered as we drove towards the border of USA and Canada were a sure sign that winter was here. We were sad to be leaving Canada and drive back across the border to USA at Montana, but we were excited to see what the last chapter of our epic 6 month journey had in store!

There will be one more cheeky blog post before the adventure ends – we’ve loved sharing our stories with family and friends around the world and will be sad to see this end for a wee while! The final post will be about how we ended up making it to Yellowstone, stumbled across Idaho Falls, drove across the deserts in the never-ending state of Nevada and spent our last week in the Bay Area with family & friends before flying back to New Zealand.

Until then,

A Kiwi & A Cali xoxo

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