Northern Loop

Day 1

Left Grants Pass after a nice and informational tree lecture at So OR Extension.

I headed for Crater Lake with the intention to drive around half the crater and exit on the North side to get up to Bend. The closer I got, the worse smoke there was. They were having another huge fire around there and you couldn't even see the other side of the lake.

I picked up a $5 hat pin at the gift shop and then found out the North exit was closed. I had to drive back down route 62 the way I came. That was a nice 50 mile detour for a hat pin.

I am at the Bend Motel6 and had a very fine meal at Chan's of Bend . Tomorrow I head East to the Snake river and Hell's Canyon.

Days 2 & 3

Oregon is big! It took the better part of the day to cross East on US20, the Lewis & Clark trail. I saw some gazelle by the roadside. What a thrill, but it was an awkward place to stop or turn around. I did take a detour and checked out the painted hills 

at the John Fay Fossil beds in the central Oregon high desert. Its very scenic,but you don’t get to see actual fossils.

 Took a one exit jaunt on I-84, then headed up to Halfway. Halfway to what? Halfway from the interstate to Halfway, some wag has posted a roadside sign announcing 'Halfway to Halfway'. Country chuckles. The East side of Hell's Canyon has a nice forest road that skirts the rim and passes many lovely campgrounds. It reminds me of the Happy Camp - O'Brian road. I bunked down in a site with a hand crank water well and snugged into a spot out of sight of the few others, but next to the creek. It got chilly. In the morning, the storm fly of the tent was frosty and so was the truck.

Next day, the road North goes up and down spectacular canyons to Joseph and there was a distinct new white dusting in the higher elevations.

  Had breakfast at the one and only Cheyenne Cafe in Joseph. The walls are decorated with burnt in cattle brands and the town sports a rodeo office. The waitress was blubbery and what folks around there would call 'slow'. The omelette was good, the coffee lousy. A sign on the wall says "Say No to Pot and to Hillary too". The FM radio band picks up one station only and they play both kinds of music: Country and Western. No six foot pot grow fences anywhere, just grain silos and range cattle. The place was full of local folks chewing the cud. This must be fly-over country where locals are kind to each other and the coastal elites have forgotten exists. It's a long but lovely drive up route 3 to the Washington line, then as 128 it cuts across the extreme Southeastern corner of Washington and into Idaho at Lewiston.  I took US 12 across the Northern panhandle of Idaho. Again, spectacular country.

 This road definitely shuts down in winter. I crossed two sets of gates. From Lowell it slowly rises alongside a fly-fishing river to LoLo pass at over 8000 feet and into Montana. I was tempted to stop near the summit at LoLo hot springs, but the day was getting on. There was a 'Caution, Moose Crossing" sign, though. On the Idaho side they try to make people drive better by needlessly posting a 50 MPH limit, where it is mostly nonsense. Just over the state line, Montana cheerfully announces a 70 MPH limit, but the highway department carefully plants white crosses where fatalities have happened. I like their system better.  I crossed I-90 in Missoula, last traversed during my hippie hitch-hiking days and skirted Flat Head Lake to Kalispell where I had mediocre Mexican food next door to the Motel6, advertised as the best in the region. Where can I get some fresh trout? Tomorrow it's into Glacier. Maybe I should have brought the snow chains.

Days 4 & 5

Snookered again by fire. The road through Glacier is closed due to fire. Well, at least I picked up another cool hat pin. There are alternatives, though. I headed across the Continental Divide on US 20. There is a neat obelisk at the pass.

  Lots of snow in the high elevations and its getting colder. I stopped in St. Mary's and picked up some really delicious wild huckleberries. What a treat! Eventually, I work my way all the way around to the East side of the park and enter on a six mile dirt road

 to a gorgeous campground with one other camper in it when I arrive. It's a trailhead into the wilderness and there are notices of recent brown bear activity along the trails. The ranger tells me, though, that no bears have bothered the campground all summer. It clouded over during the night, so it was actually not as cold as in the Hell's Canyon forest.
  By morning I got some sprinkles.


Next day I enter Canada. The guy asked me a bunch of questions and looked real buff. These remote outposts breed pettiness. The road into the Canadian section of the park was, you guessed it, closed due to fire. I inquired with a real official Royal Mountie, complete with handlebar mustouche, and he routed me along some side roads back to the Eastern route leading North toward Banff. Lots of beaver ponds. Moose, elk and mountain goat caution signs, but all I saw were lots of range cattle. The weather got worse. Going up BC route 93, rain came in heavy bursts and by the time I got close to Banff NP, it wanted to hail and definitely came down as almost slush.  I had already decided to camp in a hotel. In Radium Hot Springs I found a 12 room hotel with a great view

 and a fine Hungarian restaurant. I enjoyed an appetizer of smoked salmon with capers and dark European bread, then Sauerbraten, smothered with madeira gravy with red cabbage cooked with wine. Let it snow! There are hockey pre-season games on TV. Tomorrow, up into Banff. The weather is said to be improving. I am planning to see at least a moose, maybe meese.

Days 5 & 6

On the way up into Banff NP, the weather got worse. Snow flurries, overcast and cold.

Despite frequent warning signs for moose, mountain goats and elk, there's little chance I'd see one. Up at Lake Louise, it was inexplicably busy. Bumper to bumper traffic. Shuttle buses to the sights and hordes of tourists. Who are these people? The campgrounds were closed already. I decided to look for a room for the night, only to find out everything is booked already and what is left costs an astronomical amount. I asked the woman at the information kiosk what's up and she cheerfully informed me this was still their 'high' season. So, why close all the campgrounds? I give up on Banff  and can't even find a nice hat pin. I drove up a tight switchback road, so snug even I had to back up in the turn. The picture of the falls  I took from the roadside

 was fortuitous, because when I got to the parking lot, it was jammed with cars, RV's and even tour buses, along with the requisite hordes of properly equipped hikers and 'backpackers'. I didn't even stop and headed back. There is an interesting turnout about the double spiral railroad loops and I watched several CP freights negotiate this amazing grade.

  Further down there is another closed campground, but the entrance is left open and I had a peaceful pic-nic in the cook shelter. Pesky,smart and aggressive birds akin to large blue jays almost stole my food while I stepped away to clean the dishes. There is a lovely creek swollen with that characteristic light blue-green milky meltwater  of the high mountains.

 I decided to head down kicking horse pass out of the park, looking for a place to stay. Not too far down highway 1 is the Great Divide Lodge.  Not much 'great' about it but they have rooms and they are still pricey, but about half of the in park usury. I had a thick chowder made with canned cream and a carpaccio that was nice, but inexplicably included potatoe chips. The room thankfully faced away from the highway, but a bunch of yahoos kept the place noisy and I slept very little. At least their gift shop had a nice hat pin.

The next morning there was icy snow on the truck.   Jasper got 22mm of snow and the ice fields road is, appropriately, icy. I didn't like the look of this and besides a woman at dinner told me Jasper was just as stupidly crowded as Banff. I headed down the Western slopes. Canada is about 60 or more years behind in highway infrastructure. The entire route is one extended construction site. They are finally working on turning their one and only transcontinental highway into a freeway. It'll still take a decade or so, from the looks of it. I stopped at a lovely old growth cedar grove

and at another learn about the Canadian concentration camps in the Rockies during WWI ( ! ) for Germans and Austrians. Slowly the mountains back off,  the rivers widen and a more benign countryside appears. The drive West on route 1 is lovely and the rainforest alpine setting changes to valleys, farms, fruit orchards, even vineyards. I picked up some lovely local peaches and plums, including the rare green ones, at a roadside stand. The highway skirts Crescent Lake and there is a fine rest stop

  with a view of the canyon and the Canadian Pacific line below.In Kamloops I stayed in one of the few Motel6's in Canada. For dinner, I searched for quality oriental food. I found  a really great Japanese Ramen noodle house. Extremely authentic, very busy with ethnic customers and even cheap. No more Jasper for me. The next day I headed for Vancouver.



Vancouver

Getting close to Vancouver is easy, getting in, not so much. A colossal traffic jam during early rush clogged up the inadequate road and kept me from reaching my cousin's place for over an hour. I checked into a small hotel on Kingsway where the signs in Chinese predominate and there are kilometers of noodle shops, oriental eateries and mom and pop businesses. Priscilla and Neto at first wanted to go to a Pizza place, arrgh, but I persuaded them to chose another. We went to some hip and noisy sports bar place where they consumed hamburgers. I had the oriental cod salad.

Victoria Island and Butchard Gardens

I did some research and thought the round trip ferry ride to the island was cheaper than parking the car at the terminal. The ferries leave for the islands quite a ways from Vancouver. A lot of cars fit on, but I missed the first one by five cars and, no, it is pricey. The ride itself was very nice

and probably better than what followed. I saw at least three sea otters while the multitude of far Eastern tourists were busy taking selfies on the sunny and windy side of the deck. For many years Butchard Gardens maintained a billboard on the side of I-5 near Yreka. It's been in my bucket since. The place is nice, overrun, naturally, but nice.

 The thing is, most half-decent botanical gardens, like say at UCR , have a better plant collection, more serenity and a much lower price. Not everything that goes into the bucket is worth doing. The traffic nightmare getting back into Vancouver was redoubled when the route from the terminal into town literally merged eight lanes into one!

Back in the USA

I had called Gary Hakela about my predicament with the firewood. Everywhere I went, the row of firewood I had brought from Oregon was prohibited. So now I was faced with taking that laboriously felled, bucked, split and dried camp wood back to Oregon after a 2000+ mile loop trip; No way! Besides, I wanted to see the Olympic peninsula, something placed in the bucket years ago after a quick visit to Hak's place when I did not have the leisure. I told him I'd like to deliver the wood to his place. I am sure he thought I was angling for an invitation to use his place in his absence. Actually, no, but he did offer to get me the combo for the shed and I could sleep in there. Then he mentioned the shower and wi-fi at the clubhouse. Now I was getting warmer. I took the ferry across the Fuco strait,

 another fun trip, and found my way back to Hak's mobile home estates. I actually camped out on his back porch, nicely level, under cover and dark and, yes, the shower and wi-fi were welcome amenities. Gary has put a lot of loving detail work into his place. I have somewhat of an eye for this and I can appreciate the amount of sweat and time that went into making his place a private paradise. I left my extraneous Canadian coins in his change basket by the door. I hope he finally comes and visits Fort Hay. I got some fresh cod at a roadside oyster house and cooked a nice starlight fish soup on the pic-nic bench overlooking the strait.

Olympic Pools

I drove up into the NP and hiked a long trail to some hot springs. It crosses a couple of rustic pedestrian bridges

 and follows a rushing creek.  Fall had arrived  and I got to stretch out my legs, finally. There were a bunch of other hikers, but I was blissfully alone most of the time. The river has a couple of dismantled dams that used to serve Port Angeles and the displays are all full of how great this is for the salmon and the river. Somehow, I have to ask, does Port Angeles still have electric power and if so, how is it generated? The hot springs are sulfurous and muddy. There was some predictable nudity, but, alas, the wrong kind. Still, the trail was worth it.

 Driving around the peninsula takes time. I took a quick jaunt up to one of the rainforest sites, mostly to pick up the ubiquitous hat pin, but I did see a large bull elk alongside one of the plank walks. There was a sign advising the happy campers that several elk had charged hikers there recently and to stay at least 100 feet away. It was the rutting season, after all. Some clueless guy saw the antlers with me and asked me if I thought it wise to approach. I pointed to the sign and stayed distant. He, naturally went right up to the animal. Getting gored by an elk would be a tough lesson. Another stop was at a couple of Lewis and Clark NP sites by the sea.  One overlooks the Columbia river entrance

  and has the remnants of shore batteries dating back to the civil war era. There are some cool lighthouses  as well and at one of them, one can rent the keepers house.

 On the South side of the river, I happened on a roadside fresh fish place and had truly outstanding chowder and snacked on fine smoked cod. It took until after dark to reach Tumwater and I-5.

Homeward

I trundled down US 101 and eventually cut back over to the interstate near Roseburg. Again, a nice drive, but too busy. There was a myrtlewood shop, but they had little of interest. It was good to get home. The Chetco Bar fire has been contained and the smoke has cleared. Four deer, two does, each with a grown fawn, just crossed past my back window, then came back 20 minutes later. Rain is in the forecast. I think, I'll start planning the next trip.