My room at Marmot Lodge

After spending the previous night in a small backpacking tent at Mosquito Creek campground, two nights in a nice room at the Marmot Lodge in Jasper, Alberta was a real treat!
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Day Three of our road trip from waking up early at our Mosquito Creek camp until checking in to the Marmot Lodge in Jasper, Alberta way after dark, had been the best weather, the best hike, and the most fun of the entire road trip. We had covered a lot of ground and the weather had been favorable.

I really relished and enjoyed my room at the Marmot Lodge in Jasper. I had room to dry my tent, ground cloth, rain fly, and all my camping gear. I had a fridge (cold diet Pepsi) and a toaster to toast my bagels with (which I slathered in a “brought from home” mixture of Adams peanut butter and fireweed honey). A living room, kitchen, bath, and bedroom at a very reasonable price and for two nights, so there was a “base camp” to return to after a day exploring on day four of our road trip.

The wall of my Marmot Lodge room was covered with historic photographs and one entire wall was covered in a great artistic (but true to history) rendition of a Hudson’s Bay “point blanket”. They even got the colors correct (colours eh Bernie?). So as I often do here is a short synopsis of the Hudson Bay “point blanket”, if you don’t already know the story:

A wool blanket used by the Hudson Bay Company, in the 18th century to trade for beaver pelts with the Native Americans of the Western U.S. and Western Canada. The Native Americans appreciated the wool blanket’s ability to retain heat even when wet (Just as mountain climbers did before the advent of polyester pile clothes of today). They made parkas from many of the blankets.

The earliest versions of the Hudson’s Bay “point blankets” were white with four broad dark color stripes (Green, Yellow, Red, and Indigo). These four colors were chosen because those cloth dyes in those days held their colors best.

Stripes were sewn onto the edge of these blankets with the number of stripes indicating how big the blanket was, therefore not requiring each to be unfolded at the trading post to determine same. For years, like many others, I thought it indicated how many beaver pelts it was worth, but like many other “facts” I have had in my head, I was wrong.

The blue indigo stripes then would indicate sized (and the commensurate weight) of the “point blanket”. Thin lines could indicate “half size” increments. Points ranged from one to six.

So the wall covering at my room at the Marmot Lodge held true to the four color bands on a white wool blanket with the short indigo stripes on the edge made to indicate the size of the blanket. I guess since the one in my room covered an entire wall, it should have had a double digit point designation.

Day four in Jasper tended to be a “rest day” for us. We traveled twice up past Maligne Canyon and Medicine Lake to Maligne Lake. We had all kinds of weather but mostly it was cloudy and the rains began to fall. We also walked around the lovely town of Jasper, Alberta for awhile, sticking our heads in shops, museums, and eating establishments. We looked for wildlife on our drives but only found elk and deer. We did see and photographs some nice landscapes and the “rest day” was enjoyable. The hallmark of the day though, was definitely the weather. The clouds and rains thickened throughout the day.
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The story: Canada eh? Canadian Rocky Mountain Road Trip October 2011.

A one week road trip and a couple short day hikes in Kootenay; Banff; and Jasper National Parks and Peter Lougheed Provincial Park in Kananaski country.

The success of a road trip (or hike, or backpacking trip), many times is directly proportional to the amount of planning you put into before the trip. Deciding on what you want to see is best done before the trip when you have the time and tools such as maps, guide books, internet, plus the valuable photos and information you can access on flickr- to research the trip properly.

No doubt about it, with a road trip you can have fun by just “winging it” and even with a plan, a good road trip demands that you be willing to alter the plan at any time due to weather and what you find, once the road trip begins.

I have taken a fair number of road trips solo; many with my wife; and some with friends. Solo allows you total freedom to go where you like, stay as long as you like, and see the sights that are highest on you list. Freedom and independence.

The trouble then with a solo trip is you are limited by your own research, planning, and predilections - no consultation, collaboration, or collective pooling of ideas and possibilities. By default, you are restricted by the boundaries of your own knowledge and research.

On this road trip I “joined in” on a road trip my long time friend J.J. had planned. For those of you who may follow some of my photographs and trips on flickr, he was one of three who joined me on a backpacking trip into the Wind River Range of Wyoming, not all that long ago.

J.J. approached the trip to the Canadian Rockies as a “photography” trip primarily and as a reconnaissance trip for future trips he might want to take, especially with his wife, who is also an accomplished photographer. He had never been there.

I took this as an opportunity to “see once again” some of the sights of Jasper and Banff, where I had traveled with my wife almost 40 years ago; and travel to some places I had never been before; take a hike or two; and enjoy the mountain landscapes of British Columbia and Alberta, Canada.

Looking back on this road trip already, I benefited greatly by J.J.’s research and many of the sites he had selected as being “high value” places, from a photographer’s viewpoint (or should I say “viewfinder”). I wouldn’t have seen my favorite places on this trip without J.J.’s diligent “in advance” research.

In addition to seeing many places I wouldn’t have selected, and therefore would have missed if I had done this trip solo, I got to see an iPad (J.J.’s) in operation first hand, and of course came away from the trip with the feeling that one day I would NEED one.

We took J.J.’s Subaru Forester on this trip, the same one the two of us had survived a nasty hood denting (yep a few of the dents are still there) hail storm near Banks, Idaho in 2006 - - one of our first of many road trips together. J.J. brought along two “books on CD” to make the less scenic portions of our drive a bit more interesting. Again, audio books were a first time experience for me and they really do go well with a road trip.

The two audio books that J.J. brought along were both extremely interesting and enjoyable for me to listen to (though with my extremely poor hearing, he had to keep the volume up toward the “pegged on high” levels, so I could enjoy the stories). The two books were:

1. American Sketches by Walter Isaacson (a collection of interesting biographies of people from Einstein to Bill Gates).

2. Mission: Black List #1 by Eric Maddox (Story of the Army interrogator’s work which allowed U.S. forces to find Saddam Hussein).

The photographs I will post in this photo set, will tell the story of “what” we saw better than I could hope to accomplish with words, so I won’t try. Here though are a few of the highlights of the trip (from my perspective) and an anecdote or two, which I can’t resist throwing in:

*Henry’s Café for dinner and Libby’s Café for huckleberry flapjacks for excellent food and friendly small town service in Libby, Montana.

*When you see a sign saying “Texas Gate”, it is “Canadian” for “cattle guard”. I saw several thus labeled in Kananaski Country.

*Coming up on Kootenay National Park I saw my first time ever “BADGER CROSSING” road sign. There were of course the signs for elk, moose, mountain goat, bighorn sheep and we saw one fresh road kill black bear…but a badger crossing had to be a first for me. Must me some folks from Wisconsin living in Canada these days.

*Best hike (by far): The Larch Valley Trail starting at Moraine Lake, near Lake Louise. The needles of the larch and the leaves of the aspen were near peak. What a sight! It is a short 1,700’ elevation gain hike UP to the Valley of the Larch, but what a destination. We hit this hike on the one sunny day of our visit. Rules require you to hike in groups of four (grizzly in the area and a prime area for grizzly sow and cubs). So we attached ourselves to a succession of other hikers to do this hike.

*Best rainy day hike was the eight or so successive waterfalls, including Stanley Falls, on Beauty Creek. We only met one other hiker on this trail and the falls were beautiful. It is also the setting of one of my “short tales” of this road trip (Colin from Edmonton).

*Best photo ops (as rated by me, the non-photographer of the two of us): Marble Canyon, Larch Valley; Hector Lake; Athabasca River Falls; and an aspen rimmed lake near or in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park along highway 40 (J.J. found it). We saw lots of outstanding and spectacular landscapes but those places are the ones that come to mind first for me.

*The Canadian “eh” story. During my working life I worked all over Canada and I quickly notices that in certain parts of Canada, many of the locals often (as in almost every time), end their sentences with the word “eh” as if making every sentence a question.

The pretty young ladies of Canada also have an endearing habit of raising their voice and emphasis on the last few words of a sentence; effectively make each one a question as well. I noticed the habit popping up with young people in the U.S. in places these days as well.

So, when I wrote kith and kin about my planned trip to the Canadian Rockies, I would tell them I was dutifully practicing, ending all my sentences with “eh?” eh. Well guess what. After several days in the Canadian Rockies I heard not one “eh” uttered. I was chagrinned and nonplussed.

When J.J. and I took the mile and half hike in the rain up to the Beauty Creek waterfalls, we ran into a Canadian from Edmonton…Colin. He was a great guy and we got into a long trail discussion about hikes in the Canadian Rockies and places to see.

Colin was friendly and generous in sharing his wealth of hiking information in the area. He even showed us a photo he had taken of a wolf, a day or so earlier. J.J. and I dreamed of moose, bear, and wolf photos, but were not to see a one on this trip.

So as our long “trail talk” came to an end, standing on the trail near Stanley Falls in the rain, I mentioned to Colin. “You know Colin, we have been in Canada for four days now from Banff to Jasper, and I haven’t heard ONE person end a sentence with eh”. He smiled and in perfect Canadian style he replied “you haven’t eh?” “Well perhaps you will before you head back to the states”. Great, moments like these make a road trip!

*Forgive me Bernie from Calgary (OldDogNewTricks) but here is a story I heard a long time ago and I can’t say whether it is true or not:

When the country of Canada was first formed it didn’t have a name. So a group of founders got together to name it. They all agreed that a short name would be easier to remember and say, so they decided that the name of the new country should have only THREE letters.

The founders put every letter in the alphabet into a hat and then asked one of their members (the one who had been living in the territory the longest), to please draw just three letters from the hat and to announce each letter as drawn from the hat. Whatever was drawn would be the name of the new country. They also appointed a scribe to write the results down as it happened.

The first letter was drawn from the held high hat. The fellow looked down at the letter and announce “C” eh? Then he reached in and drew the second letter and announced loudly “N” eh? Then he grabbed the last letter from the hat and proclaimed “D” eh?

And that is how Canada got its name…..eh. (Spell Canada if you don’t get it, eh?).

Oldmantravels October 2011.