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Saturday August 11th, 2018 – approx. 200 km today – approx. 864 km total

My plan for today was to do the Rawson Lake Trail which was recommended to me by the rangers in the visitors center yesterday and which I discovered on my short walk yesterday. So I tried to get up not too late – but well, until having breakfast and finally getting ready it still was about 10 am in the morning.

I made my way back to the parking lot where I also stayed yesterday afternoon. There, I put on my hiking boots, my belly bag with some supplies, and my “weapon belt” with my camera and the bear spray attached :-). Then, I set off for hiking up to the Rawson Lake in the mountains south of the Upper Kananaskis Lake.

The trail climed quite steep uphill for a while leading through the alpine forrest. In the beginning, I tried to be as noisy as possible to threaten away some possible bears, but when I finally noticed that there were quite some other people on the trail, I figured that there wouldn’t be any bears surprising me behind the next corner and I relaxed a bit.

On the way, there where some explanation boards posted which gave some interesting details about the landscape, the forrest, and it’s flora and fauna.

This is actually something, I really like about the North American parks: Everything is nicely prepared with explanation boards, simple but clean infrastructure (such as restrooms, benches, etc.), and extraordinarily friendly staff in well prepared visitor centers sharing valuable information about activities, incidents, and any other stuff to know about the respective region.

After about one and a half hours climing uphill, I reached the Rawson Lake. And yes, it was just beautiful up there – even if the smoke from the wildfires in British Columbia still significantly limited the visibility. I spent some time up there walking along the shoreline of the lake and taking pictures. I even encountered those little creatures again of which I took pictures yesterday evening. This time, they seemed to be almost not afraid of humans and approached me up to a few centimeters. Maybe they even would have touched me if I myself had not been to afraid and chased them away as soon as they came too close.

At around 12:20 pm, I started my descent down to the parking lot where left my car arriving there after about an hour. Since the entire hike exhausted me quite a bit, I decided to take a quick swim in the lake which again was terribly freezing but well refreshing after the just accomplished physical activity. Before hitting the road again, I prepared myself some sandwiches and enjoyed them on a bench at the shoreline of the lake. The entire beach was quite crowded today.

Back in the car, I went back to the highway 40 and drove it further down south until the Highwood pass. On the way, I quickly stopped for the short Rock Glacier trail which again had some interesting explanation boards about the transforming landscape and the flora and fauna posted. From the highest pass of the region, the Highwood pass, one should have a nice view on the surrounding mountains. Unfortunately, the smoke of the wildfires still impeded the visibility.

From the Highwood pass, I started a long drive all the way back to the junction of the highway 40 with the Smith Dorrien Trail, a gravel road to the town of Canmore. With a couple of foto stops, I drove that trail all the way up to Canmore in about 2 hours. Shortly before reaching Canmore, it became quite dark and a thunderstorm seemed to pass by. It also started to rain a bit which was not too bad as my car became quite dirty from the drive on the gravel road.

When I reached Canmore, my first intention was to look for a campground there. But then, I reconsidered it and continued on the Trans-Canadian-Highway to Banff, that famous town of the corresponding National Park which I wanted to visit during the next days. Since it was anyways raining, my idea was to continue driving a bit and save time tomorrow when it hopefully would clear up again.

Close to Banff, I managed to get the supposedly last site on the Two Jack Lakeside Campground. There, I made my first experience with camping in the car during a rainy environment. But it worked out better then it sounds and I was even able to enjoy a dinner without becoming wet:

So I’m even prepared for worse weather conditions – which might await me in the Yukon…

This night, I slept quite well after the hike in the morning and the long driving afterwards. For tomorrow, I planned to visit Banff and start my journey on the Icefield Parkway towards Jasper.

Friday August 10th, 2018 – approx. 140 km today – approx. 664 km total

This morning, I woke up the second time on the Calgary West Campground with a little headache. In addition, I did not really sleep well and woke up a couple of times. So before heading into the Rocky Mountains with less infrastructure, I decided to once more stop by at my beloved Walmart and change the sleeping situation. I already reported about the result in this post.

After that upgrade of my little camp vehicle, I was heading west into the Rocky Mountains. Just a few kilometers before reaching the Kananaskis town, I turned left onto the Kananaskis Trail aka. the highway 40. At the first visitors center, I stopped and asked for some information. That way, I finally could get an explanation for the “cloudy” climate which I was already wondering about in Calgary: It’s because of all the wildfires in British Columbia on the other side of the Rocky Mountains! A ranger showed me a map with all the wildfires – and believe me: There were a lot of them!

In addition, I got some valuable information about possible hiking trails for the next days. And I also got this information:

Talking to the rangers in the visitors center, this made me buy a “bear spray” as my new weapon against any unwanted confrontation. The rangers adviced me to cary that bear spray with me all the time when entering the woods – especially not only here in the Rocky Mountains, but also in the Yukon where I eventually might travel to.

After all those information, I headed further south and left the highway 40 at the junction to the Kananaskis lakes. There, I stopped on the day use area of the southern lake aka. the Upper Kananaskis Lake. I took a short walk along the shoreline of the lake and encountered the junction with the trail to the Rawson Lake – one of the trails recommended by the rangers in the visitors center. As it was already too late to start going on that trail, I returned to the parking lot and took a short swim in the lake. I can tell you: I hardly encountered that cold water than here! It was freezing!

In the evening, I prepared a quick dinner sitting at the shoreline of the lake and took some beautiful pictures of these little creatures (for which I even used my monster lense the first time while here in Canada):

You have to excuse: This picture was taken with my smartphone. The really good ones are still on my camera!

About an hour before sunset, I left the day use area and started looking for a campground to stay on this night. The very first one, I stopped at was the Interlakes campground on the little stretch of land between the two Kananaskis lakes. According to a sign posted at the entrance, the campground was already full – as all of them, I passed on my way down here. Still, I talked to the manager and – voilà – there was one site left as the guy that booked it left an invalid credit card number and did not show up again. So, I pulled into my site for the night, but shortly after left again for a short drive to the shoreline of the Lower Kananaskis lake. There I spent some time and even watched a ranger stopping by – so just sleeping in the car on any parking lot really seems to be problematic within the parks. Eventually, I made my way back to the campground and went to bed quite soon. The next day, I didn’t want to get up too late, as I wanted to do the Rawson lake trail and afterwards still continue on the way back to Canmore.

Thursday August 9th, 2018 – approx. 360 km today – approx. 524 km total

The ones of you who paid attention might have noticed that there’s a posting missing about that trip to the south of Alberta shown in the map. Well, during my preparations for this road trip back home, I read in the Lonely Planet that there’s a place called Vulcan here in Alberta. Like all the other little towns down here in the south of Alberta, almost nobody would even know about this place – if people there did not have that genius idea of selling their city to tourists as the Star Trek town due to its name Vulcan which is also the name of the home planet of Mr. Spock. When I read about this, I right away decided that I have to go see this place – I mean how can I resist as an old fan of Star Trek?

Driving those approx. 130 km from Calgary to Vulcan was quite easy. Actually, I just had to take highway 2 out of the city and follow it until the junction with highway 23. That was essentially going straight – and I really mean straight (see map) – first eastbound and then a couple of kilometers southbound. It is impossible to imagine how it feels driving those roads when you did not experience it on your own. I litterally set cruise control to 100 kilometers per hour and went all the way to Vulcan without doing anything more then holding the wheel in its position.

Arriving in Vulcan, one can right away see its main – and actually only – attractions: A model of the spaceship enterprise, a huge solar panel construction in some kind of a tree shape, and the visitors center designed to look like a landed spaceship.

I basically took some pictures, looked around in the visitors center, and talked to the staff there. Then I drove down the center street figuring that there’s really nothing more to see here and went on to the Little Bow Provincial Park recommended by the staff of the visitors center to have lunch there.

However, arriving in the park and trying to prepare lunch, I had to determine that my gas stove again did not work properly. In the morning, I checked it since I already had those problems the day before and it was working well. Now it did not heat up the water sufficiently and so I decided to leave right away again and drive all the way back to Calgary to buy myself a new stove. My plans for this road trip mostly include camping in the car and so I really depend on a working cooking equipment. I really didn’t want to be up there in the Yukon with nothing around me for next hundreds of kilometers and missing working equipment for preparing my meals.

In the downtown branch of the already known Atmosphere store, I eventually found my new travel companion. Since driving back to Calgary changed my plans already, I took the chance of driving a bit through the city figuring that the first impression I got from walking around yesterday was really sufficient. So I drove back to the same campground I was staying on last night and spent there another night.

Now there’s even a Google Map on which you can follow my route. Thanks to the limitation of 10 layers per maps, I will most likely have to create multiple maps for the different route sections. Until then, you’ll find the map here.

Friday August 10th, 2018

Unfortunately, last night, I was not sleeping that well, waking up every while and then and having a light headache in the morning due to uncomfortable sleeping positions. But what to do about?

Well, since I’m traveling by car and am saving a lot of money on not using motel or hotel accomodation, I thought I could spend a little of the savings for improving the outfitting of my little car camper. And thanks to Walmart Supercentre, here it is: My ultimate update to first class sleeping in the car!

And the best about all that is: I just spent about 25 EUR for a foam mattress, the cover and a better pillow! I’m almost looking forward to go sleeping again ;-). But now let’s get going into the Rocky Mountains – I’ve got a bed and a lot of food supplies – I’m prepared!!!

Wednesday August 8th, 2018 – approx. 164 km today – approx. 164 km total

Once again, might flight from Toronto to Calgary was hopelessly delayed – this time because of waiting for other passengers with connections. Even after boarding, which already took place two hours later than scheduled, I was sitting in the airplane waiting for taxi and takeoff. Air traffice in North America somehow seems to be a nightmare…

Well, but eventually I arrived in Calgary at around 0:30 local time. Luckily, I was even able to contact my car rental agency and pick up my rental car for the next six weeks. I got a Hyundai Tucson which at the first glance I thought is smaller than I expected. But I still refused the upgrade for 10$ per day to a larger category and – after picking up my luggage – drove away from the aiport to my accomodation for the very first night in the west of Canada.

I slept quite well – even if a little short – that night and spent the next day setting up my vehicle as base for my adventure in the Rocky Mountains, British Columbia and – most likely – the Yukon. I started the day having breakfast at Cora’s which I knew of a hint of a British family that I met in my accomodation. There, I got an excellent breakfast.

After that, I made my way to Walmart, Atmosphere, and Canadian Tire to buy the missing equipent for my road trip. At Canadian Tire, I even found a small cooler box for a reasonable price – at least for North America. Such things are much more expensive here and there are less offers than with all those ALDI, Lidl, and whatsoever things back there in Europe. However, I was really enthusastic to have found that little guy which will help me even having some fresh stuff to eat and not only canned food.

All the driving between the different store locations, the shopping around and the actual setting up of my vehicle took me almost the entire day. Just in the evening, I finally made it to downtown Calgary and walked a little there. The city itself is pretty but nothing that special. So I decided to drive to the campground at around 7 pm. There I tried to cook some food and figured that my gas stove seems to be broken. I already had problems with it a couple of times when camping with Paola back there in Germany. In the end, I had to prepare sandwiches for dinner. After that little incident, I went to bed – the first time sleeping in my new Home Sweet Home – which actually looks like this:

Tuesday August 7th, 2018

Pearson International Airport, Toronto, Canada, 20:00 local time – I’m waiting for my Air Transat flight TS 849 to Calgary which marks the beginning of a – hopefully – great roadtrip adventure.

While my wife Paola is taking English classes for about 10 weeks in Toronto, I’m using the chance of traveling – unfortunately alone this time. To support her in her first days, I came with her to Toronto on July 25th and we spent a couple of days together. From July 26th to July 28th, we traveled with a rental car all the way from Toronto to Ottawa, the capital of Canada. On the way, we visited Prince Edwards Island, the city of Kingston and the Thousand Islands in the north-western tip of the Lake Ontario. Before and after that short trip, we used our time together to get Paola started with all the things necessary for her language learning experience which then started on Monday July 30th. While she is staying in Toronto with a hosting family, I’m traveling through the country for about 8 weeks.

My first short trip took me to Boston, MA where I visited my aunt Christine, my uncle Joe and my cousin Leah with her 10-months old baby Charlotte. I enjoyed visiting the impressive city of Boston and the both well-known universities of Harvard and the MIT. Apart from that I enjoyed a day trip along the coast of Massachusets visiting the many small towns and villages. It was just a really short trip, but thanks to my aunt and my uncle I’ve seen a lot and enjoyed the time with them to the maximum extent possible.

However, the trip back to Toronto was unfortunately not that pleasant: After a number of announced delays, my flight with Porter Airlines was finally completely cancelled – supposedly because of bad weather conditions. In the end, this made me rent a car – or should I rather say a tank according to the enormous size of that vehicle – together with some other stranded travelers and drive all the way from Boston to Buffalo, NY. We were driving the entire night, starting in Boston at around 23:30 in the evening and arriving to Buffalo, NY at around 6:30 in the next morning. From Buffalo we took a bus back to Toronto which of course was also delayed.

Back in Toronto, I could finally get my reserved rental car after another series of delays with the rental company Discount and drive the way back to Buffalo, where I spend two days with Fábio, a friend of mine from my time back in Brazil in 2006/2007. He was showing me around his new adopted home, the city of Buffalo and did an incredibly good job in doing so. We rode bikes through the city, visited the Letchworth State Park and the Gorge a few miles behind the world-famous Niagara Falls. I got to know some of his friends also living in Buffalo and spend a beautiful time with them there. Unfortunately, the time was just limited a bit as I wanted to spent a final night and day with my wife in Toronto before leaving for my great adventure in the west of Canada…

… and here am I now waiting for my flight to take me to Calgary, where I’m going to rent a mid-size SUV and drive westbound to Vancouver and – most likely – northbound to Yukon and maybe Alaska. On the way, I’m going to sleep in the car, mostly using simple camp grounds, but maybe also in the pure wilderness from time to time. Such a roadtrip has always been one of my dreams and now came the time to fulfill it. Unfortunately alone since my wife Paola chose to take those English classes which I completely support and am thankful for her to have that chance. However, I will enjoy the roadtrip to a maximum and am going to post infrequently here about my experiences and impressions. So stay tuned and follow me on the trip through Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska!