Crossing The Border
While we smoked, I pulled out the map and sold Pete on the idea that if he could arrange for two more days off, that we could be in Banff, by Monday night, run the Icefields Parkway (Highway 93) up through Jasper National Park, spend the night in Kamloops, British Columbia Tuesday night and have him back in Seattle by Wednesday evening.
In truth, it was an easy sell. Pete got the extra time off and we spent the evening catching up with my friends Dave and Sue Chambers in Northport, WA and planning our most aggressive drive yet, a whole 326 miles!
You see, we had discovered that stopping, taking pictures, smoking cigars, and generally enjoying ourselves is not all that conducive to covering a lot of ground-so we pretty much gave up covering a lot of ground. After all, we weren't in a hurry, we were seeing country we'd never seen from a motorcycle and we certainly weren't training for an Iron Butt.
Crossing into Canada I had my first and only real mishap of the trip. I had missed the turn off to the border crossing and after we doubled back to find it, I hit gravel in a curve and low-sided at 5 mph. With the bike all the way over on its side, it took both of us and a Good Samaritan who stopped to help us get it back up. Luckily, the only damage were scratches.
And, although not hurt, there was a bit of damage to my ego; it took the remainder of the day before I began to feel confident again in the curves.
The last two hours of the ride to Banff were through Alberta's Kootenay National Park where we saw deer, bald eagles, moose, and bighorn sheep too numerous to count.
Arriving in Banff, we topped off the day with a great steak at the Saltlick, and decided that we could take our time the following day on our way up to Jasper and still have time to make it to Kamloops by the end of the day.
On Day Nine, we took the Icefields Parkway which cuts through Banff National Park and later Jasper National Park on its way to the city of Jasper. With a beautiful sunny morning and plenty of time, we stopped at almost every pullout to drink in the beauty. This was recommended to us by Bob as one of the most scenic rides on the continent and we'd be hard pressed to disagree. If you haven't made this trip, it belongs on your bucket list.
This stretch of road is amazing. If Pete hadn't had a deadline, we would have turned around at Jasper and ridden the same route back to Banff just for the experience.
The weather had different ideas, however. By the time we reached the actual ice fields near Jasper, there was a storm brewing on the other side of the divide. It started to snow, and we quickly determined that the best place for us would be on the western side of the mountains in Kamloops.
The next three hours were about as miserable as the entire trip ever got. Just above freezing, we hit a torrential downpour of rain. With no shoulder to pull over to and no place dry to stop we elected to push on to Kamloops hoping that we'd eventually get out of the storm.
After about an hour, our gloves soaked through, our hands freezing, our low-gas lights on, and our helmets fogging up to the point we couldn't see . We pulled in behind a logging truck going about 40 mph and followed his taillights-hoping all the while that he wouldn't run off the road or stop suddenly.
Needless to say, wet, cold, tired, and hungry, we didn't make it to Kamloops, although we did find a gas station in the nick of time. It was to that point both the best and worst day of the trip. Exhausted, we found a cheap, dry hotel in Valemount and called it a day, only about 200 miles short of where we wanted to be.
Day Ten found us dry and well rested on 10 hours of sleep. With sunny skies, we saddled up for Pete's last leg of the journey. In stark contrast to the previous days, the only wildlife we saw today was a very large black bear on the side of the road. I rode by thinking "Sit! Stay!" It did, and we made good time to Merritt, B.C. (the "Country Music Capital of Canada") where we had lunch, grabbed a quad espresso and finally split up with Pete headed to Seattle and I back to Northport to spend a another day with the Chambers.
While this ride didn't have the grandeur of the Rockies, it was beautiful nonetheless. About an hour and a half of the ride was down Highway 97 beside Okanagan Lake which is clearly a vacation destination in its own right. At 560 miles, this turned out to be my longest day yet in the saddle and I was very appreciative that Jeff Meehan had loaned me his AirHawk pad for the tour.
I then took a day off road to visit with the Chambers in Northport.
Yellowstone National Park & The Grand Tetons
My first trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons was when I was 15 years old. I fell in love with the park and with the Rockies in general at first sight. Having never really gotten over that love affair, I couldn't get Yellowstone out of my mind for the next destination. Given that there are some incredible rides in Idaho and Montana I'm sure I did myself a disservice by not taking my time through those two beautiful states-but the heart doesn't always make the best decisions.
I hit the worst section of highway coming out of Spokane on Interstate 90. It was highly rutted and in dangerous shape for motorcycles. The bike became so difficult to control that I actually pulled over to see if something was wrong with it.
Crossing into Idaho the road smoothed out and this being the thin part of the state, I never realized when I crossed into Montana. Montana is known as Big Sky country and it does have some incredible vistas. Unfortunately, the state board of tourism and the highway department haven't seen fit to provide many turnouts on Interstate 90, so I just rolled on through to Deer Lodge.
The following day is when the ride got really beautiful again. After a few hours on Interstate 90, I turned south on Highway 191 to get to the West Entrance of Yellowstone. Well paved, sweeping curves running along trout streams, and plenty of pullouts.
I reached Yellowstone a little after lunch and it of course was everything I remembered-a highlight of the trip. It is early enough in the season that the buffalo and other wildlife are still down in the valley and the only open campground was perhaps half full.
If you haven't visited Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in the spring on a motorcycle, it's another thing to add to that bucket list. I spent the next two days idling through the parks, stopping to photograph the wildlife and the grand vistas that Ansel Adams help make so famous.
The real thrill of being on a motorcycle here is the ability to be so connected to the environment. As I crisscrossed back and forth around the park, I truly felt sorry for all the tourists that were stuck in their motorhomes and automobiles.
The Beginning Of The End
After experiencing the Tetons and Yellowstone, I turned east on Highway 26 along Wind River to Casper Wyoming and then dropped down thorough Denver to stay a few days with my friends Eric and Rachel Beck in Bailey, CO. It was also time for another service on the bike and I needed to follow up a call from a headhunter.
So, nineteen days into the trip, the headhunter arranged for a phone interview with a potential employer, a digital agency in San Francisco. I spoke with one of the founders for about an hour and we both came away feeling that we might have a potential fit. He asked me when I would be back in SF, and I mentioned that I didn't really plan on coming back until I had a job. A second call later in the day was an offer by them to fly me in the following week for an interview.
Things were looking up. And, since I still had a week before I needed to be in SF, I decided there was plenty of time to continue south through Silverton, Durango, Mesa Verde, Sedona, and eventually to Phoenix to catch my flight and see if I'd found my new job.