Day 99, Thursday, September 22

I called Steve yesterday to check which day I should arrive in Sacramento. His answer was "as soon as possible, how about tomorrow". He then added that if I was going to arrive "tomorrow" I should do so before 2pm because it’s his and Heidi’s 5th year anniversary. I quickly replied "Um, how about I arrive Friday instead?" I figure that Heidi would be FAR less than appreciative if I crashed her day!
The ride down the Oregon coast today was beautiful. I’ve never seen such expansive sandy beaches. It was too cold for people to be out enjoying them, but there’d have had to be millions of people out on the beaches before they even remotely began to get crowded. I’d thought that most of the coast North of California was rugged and rocky like I saw on Vancouver Island. Boy was I wrong.
I ended up driving further today than I’d expected to drive. Nearly 350 slow rolling miles from Portland, over to the coast, then down 101 across the California border to the town of Crescent. 101 was a helluva fun ride though! Beautiful and twisty!

Day 98, Wednesday, September 21, 2005

This morning I headed over to get new tires put on the RT. I had PMC put on tires which are designed more for touring than they are for sport riding. Hopefully I’ll get better mileage from these tires than I did from the set I’m replacing. After leaving there I headed over to REI to pick up a new head lamp http://www.bdel.com/gear/zenix_iq.php and a Nalgene food container then came back to the KOA and spent the day working on this blog.
Tomorrow I’ll ride over to the Oregon coast for a leisurely ride and then the next day I’ll head down to Sacramento to spend the weekend with Steve and Heidi Li

My bike at the very front of the ferry. Traveling around Vancouver Island and along the Sunshine Coast has been a fantastic experience.

Day 97, Tuesday, September 20

I rode from Vancouver Island to Portland Oregon today. Along the way I took two ferries for a total of nearly 3 hours on the water while in Canada. The rest of the ride was entirely uneventful and unfortunately mostly on major highways.
I pulled into the same KOA in Cascade Locks I stayed in back on August 10. Tomorrow I’ll head over to Portland Motorcycle Company for the second time on this trip and will get them to put new tires on my motorcycle.

My bike parked outside of Karma Coffee just before I headed out. I am going to make sure that I cross paths with the Clarkes again. Soon, I hope. Two weeks from now Michael and Quinn are headed out to basecamp at Mt. Everest. Pretty cool experience for a 6th grader, right?

Michael at his business, Karma Coffee running his main roaster. I tasted a couple of his mixes and they were super tasty.

Day 96, Monday, September 19

There are few things less fun that packing in the rain, and that’s just what I did this morning. It literally doubles the amount of time it takes me to hit the road. The other thing that packing in the rain does is to ensure that everything you have it damp or fully wet when it’s packed away which promotes mildew. Neither mildew nor doubling my departure prep time are high on my list of likes! Michael and Cindy headed on over to Karma Coffee and suggested I should stop by on my way out. By the time I got there it was already lunch time. Another thing I discovered this morning is that the eggs I’d purchased just before heading over to the West side of the island and which have been sitting in my cooler since then were apparently broken by the extremely rough ride on the torn up road. Translation? I had rotten egg filth covering most of the contents of my cooler and had to spend a fair amount of time sanitizing that before heading out on this rainy morning. YUCK.
After taking some pictures of Karma Coffee I hit the road and headed for the ferry to the mainland. My intention was to make it all the way to Vancouver today but I screwed up towards the end of the day. The mistake I made was asking for directions rather than going on my gut instinct (I got bad directions which caused me to retrace some of my steps, basically chasing a ghost, instead of following my nose which was leading me to the ferry.). Result? I missed the last ferry from Vancouver Island to the mainland by about 20 minutes. Back tracking, I wound up at campsite about 20 minutes away from the ferry and called it a night.

One of the things I've started doing on trips is to purchas a painting or print that reminds me of some part of the trip. The guy who painted this picture is one of Michael's friends. I think the style is stunning and I will definitely purchase one of his works when I rejoin the ranks of the wage earning masses. The canvas here is actually a 4x8 sheet of plywood! I just find this painting incredibly captivating. The painting is sitting under the grape vine here because if the house fell down the hill while we were jacking it up, Michael didn't want to lose the painting!

looking down from just beside Michael's house

Day 95, Sunday, September 18

Between yesterday and today, the house is now standing on about 10 new posts and has been jacked up 2 – 3 inches all around. Let me tell you, watching the 6-ply beams of 2x8 lumber bending across the 8" dimension is really eerie when you realize there’s a house sitting on them. I’ve never heard creaking and groaning noises like that house emitted during jacking ever before. Several times I was scared we were going to break the main beams because they were bending so much. But in the end, the job got done very well and the house is now much more secure than it was before. It’s fun to be a part of a job being done not with cranes and modern equipment bur rather with a little ingenuity and a hand jack!
Last night we went over to collect some more lumber that Michael has stored elsewhere on the island and brought it back to the house in the skiff. I’d never have guessed that that little boat could hold as much weight as we had loaded into it. Three big guys plus about 35 boards 2x6 fir lumber between 16 and 18 feet in length. I’m 100% sure that we grossly exceeded the "manufacturers recommended weight limit" for the boat. But this is Lasquiti and anything goes here!
We headed back to the mainland this evening with the skiff nearly equally loaded as it was last night. 4 pickle barrels of apples. Lots of duffles and bags, a sliding window for Cloey’s room back at home, half a dozen 16 foot long 2x6 boards, three guys and a big dog. Lasqueti luck was with us and we made the crossing without incident. What a good time!

The only public transportation onto Lasquetti is the passenger ferry (no vehicles allowed). You can see it here. It's the largest boat at the dock.

This is the unmanned cookie stand I mentioned in my journal entry for today.

This is looking down the inlet from the house. This inlet drains comletely of water during low tide. One of Michael's friends made the boat in the foreground many years ago, used it for years, and then after the boat went through sevearl additional owners, it got parked it here in its last floating days. Now it's just decoration and is FIRMLY grounded and waterlogged

This is Michael's house there on the island. The house is charming. If you look closely, you can see a green garden hose running down from the house and emptying into a cast iron tub down below. Welcome to outdoor bathing! The hose carries hot water from the house down to the flat for either a tub bath of a shower. Something incredibly invigorating about taking a shower in the great of of doors!

Day 94, Saturday, September 17

A little back ground on Lasquetti Island. It has been in the past and to some extent today continues to be an island of hippies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that in a negative tone at all! The island is charming and beautiful. Life here just goes a bit slower than else where in the outside world. Slower and much more relaxed. I ‘d heard Michael mention several times yesterday that in order to get to the main harbor where the ferry docks, you walk down a long path out to the road, past "the cookie stand" and then turn right. Coming from Chicago, I was having problems envisioning what "the cookie stand" was. The only place I’ve seen "cookie stands" is as stores in malls. Turns out that the cookie stand is just that. A stand something like you’d expect to see young kids using to sell lemonade in an episode of the Little Rascals. It’s not even manned! The guy bakes cookies and harvests veggies from his garden then leaves them in the stand along with a price list and a small radio playing songs to keep away raccoons. People simply drive by, drop their change in the bucket and grab a cookie. Can you imagine this concept being attempted in Chicago or any other non-Lasquitian city? All of the produce plus the money in the bucket would be gone by the end of the day. Yet it works quite well here on Lasquiti. According to Michael, people often will go by and grab a cookie without paying several times but then realize they’ve not paid for the last few visits and just guess some amount to toss in the till. Apparently the guy actually comes out ahead with this system most of the time. Again, very cool!
Michael’s got two types of water in his house there. The water coming out of the tap is actually drained from a swamp further up his land. It’s got a very earthy smell and taste and generally isn’t good to drink. The drinking water there gets collected in a pickle barrel and is siphoned from a standing pool of water just inside the mouth of an abandoned gold mine there on his property. This water also has an orangish tint and earthy taste but is apparently good and clean. Sort of reminds me of us pulling water out of the spring at Happy Hollow when we tent camped on our land there.
I’m not sure I’d be thrilled to live on Lasquiti at my current stage of life but I can see that it’d be a wonderful place to grow up as a young kid! No poison Ivy, no fierce animals to worry about, and LOTS and LOTS of woods and shoreline to play in and on. Heaven for a kid!

Looking back at Vancouver Island from the boat. I can't believe the water line in this picture actually came out fairly level. Purely by accident, I assure you!

Michael Clarke and Huck. That's Vancouver Island in the back ground. We're about 1/2 way to Lasquetti Island at this point. The water was thankfully almost glass calm!

Day 93, Friday, September 16

After some early morning errands Michael, Stephan (Michael’s friend who’s doing carpentry work on Michael’s house), Huck the dog, and I hopped in a skiff (a deep-v aluminum open boat with a 25 hp outboard) and headed over to Lasquetti Island. The trip across to the Island is about 10 miles and takes about 50 minutes and you simply have to pray for calm water and low winds. Michael’s place there in Lasquetti is really cool. He actually built it himself from wood which he beach combed and had milled there on the island! Very cool. It’s at the back of a super long and narrow bay which completely empties with low tide. Michael, Cindy, and their daughters lived in the house for many years before heading over to the mainland for Cloey’s and Quinn’s schooling needs. The main task we’ve got ahead of us this weekend is jacking up the house. Apparently the last person who Michael rented the house to failed to tell him that the house settled…by nearly 3 inches! (He also failed to pay rent, but that’s another story.) We arrived at the house late today and the general consensus was that we’d start working on jacking the house up tomorrow morning.

Day 92, Thursday, September 15

I headed back to the East side of the island today to meet up with Michael Clarke for the possibility of going over to Lasquetti Island. The ride back to the East side of the Island was equally as harrowing as the ride to the West because of that same 10km stretch of road that’s torn up and rutted. This time there were quite a few sections of really deep gravel. No fun at all.
I got back to Michael’s store, Karma Coffee, a bit earlier in the day than I’d expected, thinking that I’d have a better chance of finding everybody there. Nope. The place was locked and lifeless. A call to Michael’s cell and I found out that they’d left early today and that Michael was doing business in a town just down the road. He told me to drive on over to his house, but to be aware that he’s got a big dog that "Definitely will bark at you as you ride in, but won’t bite". Not very comforting words, but I figured I pretty much had to trust him. He was right. The dog, Huck, definitely is big and has a menacing bark but it turns out that his barking is basically saying "Look what I found!" Turns out he’s a really great dog.
When I dismounted I met Michael’s wife Cindy and their youngest daughter, Quinn. Michael and Cindy have given all three of their daughters really interesting names. All of them have names that were chosen for their meanings rather than just because Michael and Cindy liked the sounds of the names. I only remember the first names of each of the daughters and unfortunately it’s their full names that have meaning. Cloey (I’m sure I’ve spelled that wrong) is the middle daughter and Tillicum is the oldest. I met Cloey briefly this evening and won’t get to meet Tillicum this time because she lives in another province. Quinn is possibly the most extroverted, self confident, and stubborn (comes with being the youngest daughter) tomboy 15-year-old I’ve ever meet. She’s great fun to talk with.
Michael tells me that originally the plan was to head over to Lasquiti tomorrow ,but now he’s thinking that it’ll be Saturday instead. Either way works for me!

Sunset from the beach a few yards away from my campsite on Vancouver Island.

This was the exception. Very cool to see it up this close! Many of the whales we saw were breaching during their bubble netting technique for catching herring

You can just BARELY see the top fin of a humpback whale just at the horizon line and about 1/3 of the way in from the left edge of the picture. This is generally how far away from the boat all of the whales were. With one exception...

According to the guide, this is the last lighthouse on Vancouver Island that's constantly manned rather than automated.

On the way out of the harbor/bay the boat driver brought us alongside some seal adorned rocks.

Went whale watching on one of the blue zodiacs at the bottom of this picture. Saw humpback whales only. No gray whales, no orcas. Still very fun!

Day 91, Wednesday, September 14

Spent this morning taking a shoreline hike along the rocks South of my campsite. The rocks here are jet black and extremely jagged and geometrical in nature. Unlike any rocks I’ve ever seen. They make for easy climbing but would make for a treacherous fall or collision were you in a boat. They’d literally shred any boat which rubbed against them.
This afternoon I went whale watching with a group of about 10 people. The boats the company uses are open bow, hard bottom Zodiacs with a pair of 200 hp motors out back. The ride out into the ocean was a blast (I was of course sitting in the very front of the boat because the ride would be roughest there) and we saw numerous hump back whales. Nearly all of them were too far away to get great pictures of, especially from a rocking boat, but they were all definitely close enough to be thrilling! My benchmate (an acceptable word, right?) was a girl named Kirsten who was up here from San Francisco with her family which was up from Seattle. Kirsten turned out to be a fascinating companion because she’s been all over the world hiking and camping. From Spain to Venezuela, Tibet to China, and throughout much of Canada and the US. She invited me to give here a call when I find myself down in San Francisco and I’ll definitely take her up on that offer!

The shoreline of this section of the island is beautiful and rugged

This is the Ucluelet lighthouse. There were large horns pointing seaward from the base of the lighthouse which weren't sounding yesterday but were painfully loud today.

Looking South from the shore just south of the Ucluelet lighthouse.

Day 90, Tuesday, September 13

Spent the day climbing on the rocks around the Ucluelet Lighthouse and looking around Tofino. I’m glad I decided to do my whale watching tomorrow because the entire day today was completely socked in by fog. Visibility was about ½ mile at best and often much closer to a couple hundred yards. Only a couple times during the day was I able to see any of the outlying islands.

Day 89, Monday, September 12.

Said Thank you and Farewell to the Robins this morning and headed over to the West side of the island. As I was packing up, Susan gave me a bag full of fresh smoked salmon another of super yummy cubed stake and a couple of others full of their own yummies. I’ve really enjoyed my stay with John, Susan, Noel, and Dean and will definitely keep in touch with them.
As I turned off of HWY 1 onto HWY 4 to Uclueclet, I passed another motorcyclist towing a trailer. He later caught up to me as I was stopped beside the road to put on another layer of clothing and invited me to join him for a coffee. Why not, right? Maybe this would be another of my great accidental crossings! Yep. Definitely turned out to be just that. It turns out that he was riding a 1978 Honda Goldwing and the trailer he was towing contained the tools of his trade (espresso and coffee machine repair). The place he was headed for a coffee turned out to be a micro roaster called Karma Coffee, and the cool chance meeting this time turned out not to be the motorcyclist who flagged me down but the owner of the coffee shop, Michael. Michael has been on trips all over the world and has done many of them on motorcycles (rented from what ever location he’s visiting.) He showed me a bunch of pictures of himself and his family in various locations of the Asian continent and invited me to come back later in the week to join him on a trip over to Lasqueti Island. Lasqueti is located between Vancouver Island and the mainland about 20 miles due north of Parksville where HWY 19 and HWY 4 to Ucluelet intersect. Michael suggested that I show back up at the coffee shop on Thursday afternoon and that I set my tent up in his back yard for the night prior to heading over to Lasqueti. Why not, right? I’ve got no idea what’s in store for me over on Lasqueti but I’m eager for more adventure!
HWY 4 would be a perfect motorcycle road if it weren’t for the construction. It’s nice and curvy, winds its way through some incredibly beautiful forests and next to equally beautiful lakes as is cuts across to the West side of the Island. Only problem is that there are now large sections of it which are torn up for repaving. Torn up and replaced by lose, rutted gravel. Oh yeah, and big construction trucks which don’t give motorcycles much leeway as they pass. I must admit though, that these torn up sections are still far from the worst roads I’ve traveled on during this trip.
When I got to the West coast of the Island, I headed into Ucluelet to check out camp sites and then over to Tofino to check out whale watching excursions and possible hikes in the Pacific Rim National Forest. Turns out that there basically aren’t any hikes (I don’t count 1 mile round trip walks as real hikes) in the Forest but instead there are lots of access walks down to the ocean. Can’t win ‘em all, right? I decided to stay in a campground, called Middle Beach, just South of Tofino and about 5 miles North of Pacific Rim NP. Also found that there are loads of choices for whale watching in Tofino, all of which charge about $70 Canadian for a 2 – 3 hour trip
One other thing I learned this evening. When you’re going to be traveling over extremely rough road, it’s definitely not a good idea to leave bananas in your cooler along with hard plastic containers. Doing so results in blackened banana mush spread throughout your entire cooler and a lot of work cleaning it up!

Day 88, Sunday, September 11

John and Susan invited me to join them for a motorcycle ride today with some of their friends. The Robins have a Harley Road King (I think?) and they really dress up for the ride. Both of them have their black leather jackets, chaps, and boots which get complimented by a full assortment of other Harley attire (shirts, dew rages, helmets, buttons, ….). To me they look really cool all dressed up. Apparently to Noel, their older son, it’s a bit embarrassing! The ride took us from Duncan up HWY 1 (the Trans Canada Highway) to the town of Courtenay. This is the port from which I plan to take the ferry over to the main land in a couple of days. John, Susan and I parted company with the main group in Courtenay. The rest of the group was planning on riding a bit further up the island, but were planning on getting there exclusively on the TCH, neither a scenic nor twisty route. Why bother? Leaving the group, John, Susan and I, along with one other rider whose name escapes me headed back South by the old highway (HWY 19) which winds its way along next to the water. MUCH better! The scenery was beautiful. There are countless quaint little towns and harbors along this route and because the route parallels the shore, it’s squiggley by nature. Perfect.
Time for another side note foray. Anybody who has participated in group motorcycle rides knows that there are generally two accepted ways to do it. No, actually three. First method: bikes arranged or rather disarranged in a totally random mess as they ride down the road. Not a particularly smart way to ride in a group. There’s no way to predict what your fellow riders are going to do and no set way to react when they do it. Second method (frequented by Harley Davidsons): divide the group into pairs who ride two abreast down road. This is a slightly more organized way to ride because it keeps group order and provides a safety margin between each rider and the one in front of him, but is dangerous (and not smart in my opinion) because riders have absolutely no room to react in an emergency situation. Actually, I guess you have about two or three feet of room to react side to side, but in a relative sense, that’s nothing. Third (and by far the best) method: You ride staggered. The lead rider always rides to the front left. The second rider follows a second or two behind the leader but on the right side of the lane, the third rider follows directly behind the leader but about 3 or 4 seconds back, the fourth rider takes up a position behind the second rider and additional riders follow the pattern. This arrangement gives each rider the full width of the road to react to any situations, but also keeps the maximum number of riders packed safely into the smallest amount of road possible. The way a good rider rides in a group like this is by never crossing the line of the riders beside you unless absolutely required to. For example, if the group wants to switch from the right lane into the left lane, riders 2 and 4 shouldn’t move over until riders 1 and 3 have already moved over. Changing back is similar. Rider 1, the leader, signals the lane change to the right, but riders 1 and 3 shouldn’t actually move over until riders 2 and 4 have started to move over. This method of group riding is very safety conscious because it ensures that all riders keep track of at least 3 other riders (the one in directly in front of them and the two to the side of them). Why did I start on this track? Because the rider who came with the Robins and me was a method 1 rider. He always wanted to ride first but for some reason insisted on riding to the front right rather than the front left and frequently swerved back and forth across the entire lane as he headed down the road. It made following in a safe manner extremely challenging. He also insisted on riding well below the posted speed limit. It just about drove me up a wall! The way I coped with this was to place myself as the last rider in the group and simply hang a ways back. John Robin is definitely a very safe method 3 rider but I let him cope with the other guy rather than attempting to do it myself. I lost count of how many times John had to get on the brakes because the other rider had slowed abruptly or swerved randomly into John’s path. Other than that, the ride was wonderfully fun and definitely one I’ll repeat a few days from now when I head up to the ferry.

Day 87, Saturday, September 10

Susan took me around Duncan on a scenic tour today while, John, Dean, John’s brother, and one of Dean’s friends went salmon fishing. In the evening I washed my motorcycle for the first time since setting out on this trip and Susan prepared a wonderful dinner with the salmon the guys caught. I decided not to bother washing the trailer since I’ve heard that much of the road over to Ucluelet and Tofino is under construction and therefore VERY dirty.

The Robins and me. From right to left me, John, Susan, Noel, Dean. What great people. Again this is another family that I will definitely make efforts to keep in touch with.

Day 86, Friday, September 9

Last night at around 2am a train grinded to a stop on the rail road track just a hundred or so yards away from my campsite. It screeched and banged and squealed so much that it sounded like it was coming off the rails. I’m an extremely light sleeper so the train woke me immediately, but I’m also lucky in that I generally fall back to sleep immediately after I’ve identified what it was that woke me. This morning was bright and clear and the air smelled wonderful. From Porteau Cove I headed back into Vancouver to MEC (Mountain Equipment Coop) where I found all of the supplies I’ve been needing (two foldable dish containers, a 6L bladder from MSR, and a large Nalgene mug.) From MEC, I headed over to take the ferry from Tsawwassen over to Victoria. Motorcycles, especially those with trailers get fantastically preferential treatment. I was the #2 vehicle on and off of the boat, parked front and center. This would have been a problem if there’d been large waves (nothing to tie to bike to when dead center on the boat) but it turned out that the water was just about glass calm. The service which runs the ferries to and from Vancouver Island apparently has several varieties of ferries. Rather I should say various states of modernity. According to people I talked to on the boat, this one is one of the largest and newest in use. It was definitely the biggest boat of any sort I’ve ever been on. I’d initially thought that when I got to the island, I’d spend a day camping on the South West shore. Instead, I decided to call up the Robins (John and Susan plus their sons Dean and Noel who I met in Seattle) and see if they’d mind me dropping by. The Robins extended me a warm welcome, gave me directions and invited me to drop by. That’s how I ended up tonight staying in a warm bed instead of my tent. Actually I was planning to pitch my tent in their back yard but they invited me to sleep on one of the beds in their RV. Warm, dry, and I don’t have to repack. How could I refuse?

Day 85, Thursday, September 8

I crossed the border into Canada today and managed to get myself turned around in Vancouver. I was planning to ride through Vancouver using only my intuition and a paper map for directions. Thank HEAVENS I had my GPS. I took one (I think) initial wrong turn and that blossomed into a whole bunch of add-on wrong turns. Since I was in no hurry I tried for a little while to get myself back onto the highway without calling "help" to my GPS but in the end I gave in to technology. I’d looked on the map this morning and figured where the closest provincial parks were to Vancouver. Based on the map, the camping at Mt. Seymour seemed to fit the bill perfectly. That was, it seemed to fit until I got there. The camping is way up at the top of the mountain and while the weather was clear and comfortable at the base of the mountain, it was cold, windy, and starting to rain at the top. Screw that. I’ve had enough cold, rainy camping for a while. I decided I’d try my luck riding up the coast West of Vancouver looking for another park. I stopped by Horseshoe Bay Provincial Park and one of the workers told suggested I try further up the coast at Porteau Cove since there was no camping available in Horseshoe Bay. What a fantastic recommendation. Porteau Cove is beautiful! I got there after dark and still managed to get a campsite about 20 feet from the water. I love going to sleep to the sound of waves breaking on a shore. It reminds me of some of the special weekends of my childhood in Mobile AL when we’d go over to Cotton Bayou. Friends of ours from Church, the Gilcrests, had a house (cabin? ...things seem bigger when you’re a child) right on the water and my brother and I would get to spend the entire weekend playing in the water and fishing off their pier. I can still remember waking up in the morning to the sound of the first boats heading out of the harbor across the glass calm water followed by the sound of their wake hitting the shore a minute later. Good memories!

Day 84, Wednesday, September 7

This morning after saying thanks to Archie and happy birthday to Bobbi, I headed over to the same Seattle KOA I’d stayed in before in order to use the internet briefly. I’ve gotten way behind on e-mails and this journal and need to catch up!
I decided I wanted to have time to investigate the ferry to the San Juan Islands this evening which meant I’d need to find a camp site fairly quickly after heading North from Seattle and Bay View State Park seemed just to place to call home. I dropped the trailer off at Bay View State Park and headed over to Anacortes to check out the ferry schedules over to the San Juan Islands. Hopefully when I get back from Canada, Amy Davison will be around and I’ll be able to stop by to see her.
Amy deserves her own side bar so here it goes. I met Amy about a year ago playing volleyball in Chicago. It didn’t take long after meeting her to figure out that we had a lot of interests in common and that she was definitely somebody I wanted to get to know better. She’s very bright, an excellent conversationalist, and definitely a risk taker. Only thing was that she was leaving. She had already quit her job as an attorney, put her condo on the market and purchased a new car. Reason? She’d tired of her job and decided she wanted to go see the United States and find a truer calling. Does this sound familiar? (Very much like my "Dear Family and Friends" letter.) At that point I had already pretty much decided I was going to do a similar trip and hearing that she was planning a nearly identical trip gave me all that much more inspiration to do my trip. I had actually planned to join Amy during a section of her trip through Big Bend National Park in Southern Texas in early February, but Motorola tore those plans out from under my feet just 3 days before I was to depart. It really REALLY REEEAAAALLLLY pissed me off, screwed up part of Amy’s trip, and further concreted my resolve to quit. I’ve not had the chance to see Amy since she left Chicago and am really hoping to catch up with her while I’m in this area of the country.
When I got back from Anacortes, I struck up a conversation with the guy in the site next to me. He’s packed on his cross bicycle and is attempting a ride from Vancouver to San Diego. He was a waiter in Vancouver and, after getting sick of things there, sold all of his stuff and hopped on his bicycle seeking a better life. I hope all goes well for him but fear he may have underprepared for his trek. He doesn’t have nearly the provisions of other bicycle tourers I’ve met. He’s just got a couple of small panniers for the rear wheel and is carrying a small back pack (more like a book bag than a hiking back pack) He also has no clue what he’ll do once he reaches San Diego. More power to him. Hopefully everything turns out perfectly for him.

Day 83, Tuesday, September 6

Mindy took me to the airport this morning and I flew back to Seattle.
My flight to Seattle was uneventful but it got into Seattle after Ride West BMW closed for the evening. Before leaving for Chicago I talked with the service manager, Tom Sill, who gave me his personal cell # and told me to give him a call when my flight got in. Sure enough when I called him after disembarking, his reaction was "No Problem! I’ll meet you there." Tom drove over, opened the shop or me, talked with me for about 20 mins prior to getting me on my way. Tom, in his younger years, did a similar motorcycle trip to the one I’m on. Hit the road and see where it leads. I think he said he did it on a 300 cc Honda which, at the time, was hot stuff! After thanking Tom, I headed over to Archie Beddingfield’s house to collect my trailer. Because my schedule had me getting to his house after his bed time, I actually killed the ignition just up the street and coasted into the driveway. I put down my ground cloth and air mattress on the floor of the garage slept like the dead!

Day 79 through 82, Saturday, September 3 through Friday, September 2, 2005

Friday I had dinner with Chris Tardy, Jason Hovis (both friends through volleyball) Tania White, Jeanette Schuler, and one of Chris Tardy’s friends. My ex-roommate, Jin Sim was supposed to show up but got pissed off that he’d misunderstood which pizzeria we were meeting at and didn’t come out.
Saturday I spent with John and Jen Nock. I mentioned them back on June 21st in this narrative. These two are as true as friends get and, like I said before, I really consider them as part of my close family rather than friends. We went out to the lake where John and his family are members of a waterskiing club. John’s dad, at 72(?) years old is still winning waterskiing competitions!!!!! The day couldn’t have been any nicer and was the first time I’ve been skiing in about 8 years. I hadn’t forgotten, but it took me a few tries to get up at first. Rusty but not rotten?
Sunday I went to a Jimmy Buffet concert in Wrigley Field with Darren Borrowski, Tania White, John Atchley, and a few hundred thousand other Buffet fans. Our seats were the absolute last row at the top of the right side of the stadium. The concert was great though I made the mistake of drinking too much, especially since I really haven’t drunk a thing since leaving Chicago.
Monday I went to brunch with a friend from Motorola, Yarko Tymciurack (sp?). I connected with Yarko at work because he had an R1100RT. Since I met him he’s upgraded to a K1200LT and is fully in love with his bike. Oh yeah. He just won a Honda Goldwing FOR FREE at a local fund raising event he attended. I wonder if he could lend me some of that luck?
Monday evening I got a ride over to Mindy Lauchle’s house out in one of Chicago’s South West suburbs. Mindy’s another of the people in Chicago I consider myself lucky to know. Anybody who knows me knows that my sense of humor can be a bit off kilter and tends toward a slightly off center perspective of obscure references. More than just about anybody I’ve ever met, Mindy understands my sense of humor. She constantly amazes me with her ability to "get" my humor and build on even the most obscure and tangential thoughts that would leave most other people thinking (and often sayin) "What the heck are you talking about and where the heck did that come from?" Often I can even throw out a partially thought out humorous observation and she’ll complete it. Friends like her are extremely hard to find. She’s also one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. She’s faced some seemingly overwhelming physical health hardships in her life, has taken them in stride, and has even found ways to use them in her work as a nurse. She’s definitely one of the people from Chicago that I’ll never lose track of.

Day 78, Thursday, September 1

My good friend in Chicago, Darren Borrowski, is letting me stay for the week with him. After sitting up and talking with him last night I think I finally turned in around 2:00am. Today I went out to lunch with Darren, Mike Lambert, two of their female friends. Good conversation and great weather. This evening my plans are to go to watch bicycle racing with a friend, Megan Fitzpatric. Megan’s a really cool girl, and very much the type of personality I like as friends. She races mountain bikes in multiple formats (off road triathlons, 24 hour team races, etc). I’d never seen racing in a velodrome before. Very interesting but not really something I’d be interested in trying. The thing I remember hating most about track back in grade school was the monotony of running around in circles. Granted these guys are doing the track at a much faster pace, but it’s still the same oval track. No thank you. I’ll stick to mountain biking and constantly varying terrain! This evening I. started to reroute my trip due the hurricane devastation in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. My week here in Chicago is so packed with plans that I really doubt I’ll be able to get much computer work done while here.

Day 77, Wednesday, August 31

This morning I drove over to Ride West BMW in Seattle to drop the RT off for some routine maintenance. I got there bright and early and had planned to simply grab a bus or a taxi over to the airport where I’d wait pretty much all day until my plane left in the evening. As it turned out, one of the guys from the shop had to deliver a motorcycle to a client over near the airport in the early afternoon so instead of spending the day on a bench at the airport, listening to garbled PA system, I spent the day in the company of motorcycles and people who enjoy them.
The really interesting stuff didn’t actually start, though, until I got on the plane. The couple two rows behind me were both wasted drunk and started getting into a shouting match and a full on fight with each other just before the plane was about to pull away from the gate. The guys behind me alerted the stewardess and she had security come on the plane and yank the couple off. Everybody around them cheered for the security guy when he made them leave. Problem is that their bags were already packed and the entire plane would have to be unloaded if they were pulled off. Instead they were escorted back onto the plane about 10 mins later, accompanied by an air marshal carrying a straight jacket. The couple was seated separately on the plane and that was the end of the entertainment for the rest of the flight.
I forgot to get pictures of Archie and Bobbi before leaving their place this morning but I'll certainly get them on one of my return trips through Seattle

Day 76, Tuesday, August 30

I spent today sight seeing around the roads to the west of the Puget sound. Beautiful day of sightseeing, but not much to take pictures of. I have always liked harbor towns and this area is full of them. There’s something about the sound halyards slapping rhythmically against the masts of a harbor full of sail boats makes my nerves tingle. It’s not like I actually grew up with that sound being a staple in my auditory diet, but I’ve always had a love of the water and that unmistakable sound always means you’re near not just water, but a fairly large body of water. While I was living in Chicago, that sound meant I was near one of the harbors on Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan was fun to live near, but it gave me mixed feelings. I could look out over it, and seen *relatively* big waves, hear the sounds of the harbor, and see the boats out on the lake, but there were several things missing. Anybody who’s grown up around salt water knows "that smell" that you always get when you’re around a large body of salt water. It’s a semi-sweet smell of seaweed drying in the sun mixed with the salt spray. If you know the smell and it’s in your veins, you can smell it when still miles away from the water. Lake Michigan simply doesn’t have that. It’s got the blue water but because it lacks "the smell" it never quite felt right to me. The other thing it misses are "correct" waves. Waves on the ocean roll into the shore in sets and always parallel with each other. You can sit on the beach and close your eyes and listen as the each successive waves starts to break to one side of you and continues across until the sound fades out, and about that time you can hear the next wave taking up where the previous left off. It’s rhythmic an soothing. On Lake Michigan, especially Southern Lake Michigan, the waves look more like the boxes on a checker board. The waves get reflected from the curved shore of the lake and hit the shore randomly with seemingly no direction. I’ve heard that this reflection phenomenon actually makes the great lakes exceptionally treacherous bodies of water in a storm. Coming full circle on this train of thought, the Puget Sound looks and smells right. I really miss that. The entire time I’ve lived in Chicago, I’ve always knows I wanted to wanted to get back to living near salt water eventually.
As I was wandering around today, killing time, one of the places I happened by was Gig Harbor. Here there were more of the big power yachts than there were sailboats but the town still holds a quaint sailing village feel.
This evening I headed over to Archie Beddingfield’s house in Maple Valley. Archie and his fiancé Bobbi live there with their combined familes (her daughter, his son). Archie let me stick my trailer in the garage for the week and offered me their couch to crash on for the night. Dad and Mom wanted to know if I could "tell Archie was a Beddingfield". Better put, how much did he remind me of Ray and Jessie Beddingfield. The answer is A LOT. Listening to Archie tell stories about hunting and general experiences I could definitely hear Ray telling the same story. The similarity was comforting.

Day 75, Monday, August 29

I spent the morning today trying to finalize plans for storing my trailer during my trip to Chicago. Growing up, I spent my summers in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Two pillars of the community, adoptive grandparents to my brother and me, and invaluable friends and advisors to Dad and Mom there in Sapphire, NC were Ray and Jessie Beddingfield. When I sent out my "Need help in Seattle" e-mail a couple of weeks ago, one of the people Mom forwarded the e-mail to was Jessie. Turns out that Ray’s nephew, Archie Beddingfield, lives Northwest of Seattle, in the town of Maple Valley, and he has offered me garage space while I’m in Chicago. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to reach Archie for the last few days to confirm because, as it turns out, he’s been on vacation. After reaching him and getting directions, I headed out under extremely threatening skies to the West side of Puget Sound. By chance I found a nice campsite on the Hood Canal at Kitsap Memorial State Park.

Day 74, Sunday, August 28

This morning, David cooked up a scrumptious salmon casserole, fresh biscuits, and pulled out an assortment of marmalades and preserves. I haven’t eaten this well since Karen Torgerson and the folks from CycleAmerica fed me back at Crater Lake. Thank you very much David and Marcia for sharing your home with me. I will absolutely keep in touch with you two during this trip!
After leaving David and Marcia, I headed down into Seattle through a light rain. No surprise there, right? I decided that I’d go down to the KOA south of Seattle in order to have internet access so I could start making plans with friends for my Chicago trip.
When I got to the KOA and started to set up camp, I made a very unhappy discovery. Yesterday morning, when I was packing up camp, I apparently left my tent’s ground cloth there at the camp site! Mom made the ground cloth for me out of TYVEK material and it is (was?) far higher quality than any ground cloth you could ever purchase in a store. TYVEK, while a bit noise, makes the best ground cloth ever because it's completely water proof and damn near impervious to punctures. Let’s just say that didn’t do much for the cleanliness of my language. On this trip, I’ve developed a procedure for rainy evenings (like this one). I tie up my 9’ x 11’ tarp so I can set up the tent sheltered from the rain, then I move the tarp forward so I have a covered foyer to the tent where I can eat my meals in the dry. It’s worked very well, but isn’t an option when I’ve got to use the tarp as a ground cloth rather than a foyer. The problem with using it for a ground cloth is that all of my dinner-appropriate food requires cooking which isn’t particularly fun when it’s raining and I’ve got no cover. What a pisser. Oh yeah, one more thing, it was blowing so hard that even if I had gotten the camp stove lit, there’s no way I’d have been able to heat up my dinner.
Time for more of the good fortune which has been so prevalent on this trip! As I was standing there, pondering how the heck I was going to feed myself, this couple (John Robin and his wife Susan came by and struck up a conversation. The Robins are in town this weekend in their camper with their two sons and two nephews for two days of back to back baseball games of the Seattle Mariners. They’d come down from Vancouver Island in their camper and were having a wonderful time. When they saw me pondering my dinner options they invited me over to share dinner with them. "I’m afraid all we can offer is Spaghetti, garlic bread, and a cold beer." I don’t see how that warrants an apology. I felt like I should apologize for not being able to bring anything to dinner with me! The Robins were wonderfully entertaining to talk with that evening and invited me to come up to see them when I head up to Vancouver after my trip to Chicago. John also helped me replan my route through the Vancouver Island area to incorporate the best scenic motorcycling roads in the area. My fortune on this trip, just in terms of the people I have met and am sure will continue to meet, leaves me constantly stunned.
Tomorrow, I think I’ll head over and get a campsite onf the West side of the Puget sound in hopes of finding a campsite for slightly less money. $34 per night is a bit steep for what I’d like be paying for tent camping.

David & Marcia VanKirk and some guy with his head cut off. I'm embarrassed about this picture. I pride myself for NEVER cutting off my subjects' heads, but I failed to notice my flaw before hitting the road. NUTS!

Day 73, Saturday, August 27

In effort to beat the athletes into the showers, I set my alarm for 5am this morning, got up, showered, and packed up the tent and stuff, then started wondering. Wait a minute…why is it still dark? Turns out I’d failed to change my clock from Mountain to Pacific time which means I’d actually gotten up at 4am! Oops. I actually made pancakes and scrambled egg breakfast, cleaned the dishes, packed and was on the road by 7am! Outstanding! I headed the couple of miles down the road to hotel in Oliver where the motorcycle show was being held and got a schedule. What I found out was that the really interesting stuff didn’t get started until the afternoon which left me all morning to ride around and see the country. What I found was that valley around Oliver is famous for its vegetables and fruits, a fame I definitely took advantage of. $2 Canadian got me 4 huge peaches and 4 huge tomatoes. Try getting those deals back in the states!
In the afternoon I went back to the motorcycle show for two events, the Moto X jump show and the street stunt show. Unfortunately, the event that I really wanted to see, the trials riding demonstration. For those of you who don’t know about trials riding, it’s basically guys riding small displacement motorcycles over flat out impossible obstacles with an emphasis on never allowing the rider to touch his/her feet or hands to any part of the obstacle. What these riders can throw their motorcycles over boggles the imagination. The Moto-X jumps were pretty cool, but what really impressed me was the street stunt show. Impressed me negatively, that is. These are guys who get a kick out of damaging and destroying equipment. I recognize the amount of skill that goes into some of their wheelies but when they start doing smoky burn outs until their tires pop, and intentionally crashing their motorcycles, I just stand by looking on in disgust. I’ll take skill and preservation of machinery over destruction any day of the week!
After finishing with the motorcycle show, I decided it was time to point the motorcycle back into the US for a while with a destination of somewhere in Seattle.
On this trip some of the most interesting events have resulted from purely chance circumstances. It happened again tonight. BIG time. As I was leaving the motorcycle show I decided that I wanted hamburgers for dinner so I stopped and bought some ground beef there in Oliver. I completely forgot that the US border guards are being sticklers about ground beef coming into the US. So, as I crossed the border at Sumas, WA the border guards confiscated my dinner. Crap. Since I really had my mind set on hamburgers, I decided to stop briefly at a Safeway to pick up some replacement beef. When I was putting the meat into my cooler 5 minutes later, I noticed that a car had pulled up behind me and a guy was leaning out of the window looking at my motorcycle and trailer. Seems like everybody is curious at seeing a BMW pulling a matching trailer. Well this was different. Out of the blue, the guy asks me "Do you have any place to stay tonight?" Immediately my alarm bells went off. Loudly. (Why the heck is this guy asking me this?) "Yeah, I’m headed south of here a ways and staying at a campsite down near Seattle." (I thought that would end the conversation.) Instead he came back with "You ought to stay at my place." Now the alarm bells were ringing LOUDLY. "No thanks, I think I’ll head on down to the campground since I’ve got plans in Seattle tomorrow." Again, I thought that would end the conversation. Wrong. He introduced himself as David VanKirk "You really ought to reconsider. Both my wife Marcia and I are BMW riders and we’d be pleased to have you stay with us. You’d save yourself some money also." All the sudden the bells weren’t ringing quite so loudly. On this trip, I’ve found that every single time I’ve ignored the warning bells, something great has resulted. Warning bells silenced and retired, I said "You know what? Sure. That’d be great." and followed him back a couple of miles to his place. Marcia was definitely startled when David confronted her with "Hey Honey, look what I brought home!", but to her credit took it really well.
Turns out that David and Marcia are really wonderful, warm people with a wonderful huge extended family which they have displayed proudly in pictures all over their walls. Definitely proud grandparents! I had a wonderful evening talking with them, and while I took a shower, David actually prepared the burgers for me and made a mixed green salad to go along with the burgers. What did I do to deserve such hospitality? I don’t know but this type of generosity has been given to me on more occasions on this trip that I could ever have imagined when I set out

Day 72, Friday, August 26

It rained, hard, last night. That’s always a problem when I want to break camp and head out the next morning. If I’ve just got pack up the sleeping bag, air mattress, tent and fly then get some breakfast, wash dishes, and pack the trailer and motorcycle, it generally takes me just less than 3 hours from waking up to being on the road. However, if I’ve got to dry everything out as well, it can take a lot more time and be a real pain in the rump. That was this morning. I didn’t get on the road until nearly 11am. Thankfully, the ride itself was pretty uneventful, just long. In fact the weather even cooperated. It was prefect! Cool, clear skies, and beautiful scenery. Too bad it couldn’t have been like this when I pulled into Banff a few days ago.
My goal for today was to ride through Yoho, and Glacier parks and down to Oliver for the night. Not the longest day I’ve put in so far on this trip, but, at 500 miles, definitely a long day. I stayed just south of the town of Pendicton. When I pulled into Pendicton, I noticed that every single campsite in town was completely booked and busting at the seams. What I didn’t know is that this is the Pendicton Ironman weekend and most of the contestants and their support teams are arriving today. I managed to get the very last campsite in the campground I chose. The next problem I face is that triatheletes are always super early risers which means that I’ve got to get up and out super early if I want to have any hot water for my shower. When I plan to ride on any day, I always get 7 hours of sleep or more in order to be safe on the motorcycle. In order to get the 7 hours and still have hot water ensured, that means getting to bed by 9:30 and getting up before dawn.

I've NEVER seen an instructional sign like this on any road. No trailers were allowed on the road at all and there was a vehicle length also imposed. I'd hate to see the results of anybody trying to violate the restrictions. Guaranteed rollover, I suspect.

billed as the tightest switchback in BC. I can believe it. I found it nearly impossible to navigate this switchback (while staying my own lane) on the way up the road. Just too steep and tight. I opted for doing a loop right about where I'm taking this picture from.

I thought the lines of the rock, worn away by glaciation, were beautiful here

looking down onto a waterfall in that super narrow river (creek?)

this river dropped out of the side of a canyon. Talk about narrow. I'd hate to imagine a trip through this grinder from the top.

wild guess where I took this picuture?

this gives a hint at the size of the glacier

this zig zag stream was flowing down across the top of the glacier. very cool. (literally?)

you can see the river flowing under the glacier in this picture.

looking under the lip of the glacier

at the base of Athabasca glacier. this is the meltwater river which runs out from under the glacier in torrents.

Larry Kachadourian and his wife had ridden up from Texas on their new �05 R1200RT to see the ice fields.

imagine all the snow cones you could make with this. Anybody got some lemonade flavoring?

view of Athabasca glacier from the parking lot of the Columbia Ice Field tourist center

the road crosses a glacial runoff river which has the same turquoise blue appearance as the glacial lakes

The road from Banff up through Jasper is mile after mile of views like this. It's amazingly beautiful.

crow foot glacier on my ride up to the Columbia Ice Fields

Day 71, Thursday, August 25

As I drove up to the Columbia Ice Field yesterday I realized two things. First, taking pictures yesterday would have been pointless because of the persistent cloud cover. The pictures would have been consistently gray and uninteresting. The second thing I realized was that I definitely wanted to get pictures, so I’d have to drive the same route again today. No problem The road is clean, curvy, and magnificently scenic. I also wanted to walk out on Athabasca Glacier, a treat I couldn’t have last night. So I decided to forgo hiking for another day and spend more saddle time.
Once at the Athabasca Glacier Tourist Trap Center parking lot I added yet another couple to the list interesting people who are making this trip so memorable. Larry Kachadourian and his wife had ridden up from Texas on their new ’05 R1200RT to see the ice fields. They’d had a great trip and had managed to skirt the foul weather that plagued me as I rode into Canada on Tuesday. Good. I wouldn’t wish that weather on ANY mororcyclist (I’d definitely wish it on some of those CruiseAmerica people though!) He suggested some things to see and a couple of websites I ought to check out on motorcycle sport touring, and invited me to come down through Texas and stay with them. Thanks!
After talking with Larry I headed over to the base of the Athabasca glacier to walk around and get some pictures. Now THIS is what I call a glacier! There are a bunch of major glaciers all originating from the Columbia Ice Field which is itself over a hundred square miles in size. Walking up on the base of the Athabasca glacier makes you feel REALLY REALLY small.
On the way back to camp I got to stop and watch, all by my self, as a large black bear pillaged a row of huckleberry bushes by the side of the road. This bear was brutal and intense about eating those berries!
Tomorrow I’ll head out through Yoho and Glacier parks and then South to Oliver, BC where I found out there is supposed to be a free motorcycle show on Saturday. Again Things just seem to fall into place!
When I got back to camp this evening, I decided to head to the end of the road I was staying on to see a waterfall that’s supposed to be pretty spectacular and to see what is dubbed as the tightest switch back road in all of BC. When I got to the switch back I saw that it had definitely earned its reputation. There were signs posted all over that absolutely no vehicles with trailers are allowed on the roads and that there’s even a length limit for vehicles. I wondered about this until lI saw the switch backs. They definitely earn their reputation. In sailing terms, the first right hand turn going up was so tight that I actually had to jibe around it rather than doing it as a simple turn. (Basically I had to do a loop.) There’s even a sign there which instructs trucks that they’re required to back up the middle portion of the switch back because it’s too sharp to turn around. Cool!
The waterfalls, Takakkaw falls is definitely worth seeing, but unfortunately it was impossible for me to photograph due to the fading light. I’ll definitely be back to these mountains some time on another trip and will have to get pictures then.
One last highlight for today. On the way back to my campsite, in fact right at the entrance to my campsite, I spotted a girl trying to hitch hike up the road I’d just come down. I figured that since the road was a dead end anyway, I’d risk her being a mass murderer and give her a ride. It’s the first time I’ve ever picked up a hitch hiker in my life! Turns out she was staying at a hostel just shy of the waterfalls, that she’s a PhD student in Vancouver, and that she was from Spain. So we talked there at the driveway to the Hostel for about 20 mins or so in Spanish before I turned around and headed on back to the campsite.
Good day!

I think this is aguably one of the best pictures I've taken on this trip so far. Banff is stunningly beautiful.

a picture from Banff National Park in the late afternoon. I'd already dropped my trailer off at Kicking Horse Pass.

Day 70, Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Turns out I couldn’t even get a good night’s sleep last night because I simply lay in bed pissed off at myself for having squandered so much money on a crappy motel. I realize there wasn’t any option in the matter, but I’m still pissed. $140 is three whole days of budget squandered on one SPARSE hotel. And I really mean sparse. The hot tub wasn’t working, the pool was undesirable, and the “continental breakfast” was toast, juice, butter, and bananas. All in all pretty crappy for $140 USD.
I left the hotel today and headed over to Yoho National Park in BC to camp at Kicking Horse Pass. Thankfully the weather today was much better than yesterday. It was still rainy in bouts but in general it was nice. After setting up camp, I’d initially planned to go for a hike just up the street from my campsite, but I changed my plans, due to sporadic rain, and decided to take a scenic drive up to Jasper National Park in Alberta to see the Columbia Ice Field. Turns out that was a great choice. The drive is stunning. The mountains of Banff and Jasper are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The top portions of the mountains are ragged, snow covered, and stark like the Rockies down in the US. The lower portions off the mountains are lush, moist and green like the Smoky Mountains I’m used to out East. Combine those two stunning characteristics with the fact these mountains dwarf most of the rocky mountains I’ve seen so far and you’re coming close to an unjustly weak description of these mountains. They’re amazing. They’re also the only place I’ve ever seen *healthy* glaciers up close. I was a bit disappointed by the glaciers I saw in Glacier because they all appeared to be in their final death throws. I saw large glaciers at Mount Rainier, but those were several miles removed. These are definitely large and seemingly “just over there”.

no explanation needed!

Day 69, Tuesday, August 23

After a nice start to the day, crossing into Canada in good weather the day took a turn for the worse. Heading North toward Calgary in Alberta, almost immediately after entering the province, the skies got really dark, a monstrous and gusty wind picked up, the temperature dropped to about 40 degrees and the skies opened up. Basically the weather sucked ass. Cold, rainy, and windy. The only way it could have been worse is if there’d been hail or ice on the road.
I’d intended to take some pictures in Calgary for posterity but due to the weather I skipped that and headed straight over towards Banff. Problem was that the weather didn’t let up and by about 4:00 I was shivering so badly I could hardly hold the motorcycle straight. When I pulled into the town of Canmore I decided I’d had enough, was going to give up trying to get to Banff, and was going to have to get a motel for the first time on this trip. What I didn’t know is that Canmore is an EXTREMELY pricey ski resort town. I decided on the Best Western because it looked like the cheapest hotel in town. Cheap it was not. The cheapest room available was $176 Canadian or about $140 US. I’ve NEVER paid that much for a hotel room before. What do you get in Canmore for $140? Damn near nothing. A hot tub that’s out of order, a room with 2 beds with a big bright security light just outside the window, a petulant front desk clerk, and a continental breakfast in the morning. Not even free internet.. I’m extremely unhappy about having to stay here but I was simply in no condition to ride further. I even ended up with a sore throat as a result of today’s ride. My Aerostitch Roadcrafter held up to the first couple of hours of the rain but by the time I’d pulled over, both it and my waterproof boots were getting damp on the inside. Soaked, tired, cranky, and sick. Not a good combination. It took me nearly 30 minutes of standing in a hot shower before I stopped shaking and shivering. I really think I was dangerously close to hypothermia.

more scenery from iceberg lake

me at iceberg lake

Iceberg Lake isn't quite as silty as the lake below Grinnel Glacier

just below iceberg lake. You can see the definite bowl shape of the lake's walls

The trail up to Iceberg Lake. Unfortunately the sky was overcast all day which doesn't make for the greatest pictures.

Day 68, Monday, August 22

Today I did a hike to Iceberg Lake. The hike was beautiful. The trail head is just behind the Tourist Center at Many Glacier For the last two days there has been a grizzly bear and her cubs inhabiting the slope way above the building and people have been crowing the parking lot to look at the bears through their spotting scope. When I say the slope “way above” the center, I really mean it. These bears are so far away that you can’t even see them with the naked eye. It makes me wonder how they were spotted in the first place. Maybe some unfortunate hiker came across them and reported them to the rangers. What ever the means of publicizing their presence is, it’s definitely been successful. As I headed out on the hike at 8am that same crowd of people was already gathered there in the parking lot staring up at the sow and cubs. I’ve got to imagine that the only reason they’ve been so stationary up there is for a lush crop of huckleberries.The hike to Iceberg Lake, unlike I’d been told, was relatively easy. I got a few good shots on the way there but didn’t go crazy taking pictures because the scenery is so similar to the scenery from the Grinnel glacier hike. The lake itself is in a huge glacial bowl. Again the lake is a silty turquoise color which must be a common attribute of glacial lakes and rivers. What I failed to notice at first but quickly had pointed out to me is that the sheer walls of the bowl were littered with mountain goats. . It’s really a testament to their climbing ability. Looking at the pictures I took of the bowl, you can see the walls are damn near vertical. Unfortunately the goats were too far away to get a good picture of them.This afternoon I just did prep work in advance of my run across the Canadian border and up into Banff National Park. I think I’m going to skip the Waterton side of Glacier/Waterton park in favor of just heading North into Calgary and Banff. I’ve been warned that the winds in Waterton are especially strong and gusty right now and aren'te expected to subside any time soon. The Prince of Wales hotel that was built there on Waterton Lake in the 1920’s was actually blown out of alignment twice during its construction by the high winds!Also I did some Chicago trip prep work this afternoon from a local KOA…an easy choice seeing as the “internet café” in town wanted $5 for 15 minutes and would only allow people to use their computer. The KOA just asked for a small donation for a cancer fund and allowed me to use the internet for a couple of hours. Gotta love KOA service!

I thought the layers of wear on the rocks below the glacier were fascinating.

Looking back down teh valley from Grinnel Glacier. The hike starts at the top of the middle lake you can see in the picture.

You hear about the immense grinding power of glaciers and this rock is proof. You can see how rounded and smooth the rock is from the grinding. It almost looks like weathered driftwood.