The road home continued with a startlingly beautiful ride through Jasper and Banff National Parks in Canada. I had been there once before – as a teenager on a forced vacation with my parents. They, of course, were very well intentioned, trying to take the family to gorgeous places, but as a 15-year old I was having none of it. I have only vague memories of that trip, and so my new encounter with Jasper and Banff was like a first meeting, but this time with decades of experience against which to measure what I was seeing. Suffice it to say that driving the length of the two parks is a breath-taking journey, even after the not inconsiderable glories of Alaska, Yukon Territory, and the Pacific Coast.
One of the advantages of the current desperate economic recession is that travel is down – way down – and the roads that are normally clogged with giant RVs and minivans of disgruntled teenagers are mostly absent. In Jasper, the northern of the two parks, I often had the road to myself. Based on recommendations from Ray and Bea (from Hinton, Aunt Bea’s B & B, where I stayed the night before venturing southward through the parks), I took the Maligne Lake road, a two-hour side trip to a pristine lake at the head of a glacially-formed box canyon. Among the treats on the way up – an elk feeding by the side of the road, largely oblivious to passerby (although the reverse wasn’t true – the traffic jam of gawkers would have done New York City proud), a black bear, and several large horned sheep.
Jasper itself is fairly upscale and surprisingly calm. The town is tourist-oriented, but in a Northern California sort of way. I had lunch in a very nice Greek restaurant, and most of the tables were empty, despite the fact that the food was quite reasonable (for this part of Canada) and very good. I also stopped in at a major Native artifacts store – very high quality goods, and very little in the way of customers. After lunch, I continued on the Ice Fields Parkway, past the Columbian Ice Fields and into Banff National Park. I made a conscious decision to skip the town of Banff itself, as well as Lake Louise, spending the time instead exploring a couple of side roads, including the one to Bow Lake overlook, which offers spectacular views of a glacier and a glacial lake. I finally rode out of the parks and into Kootenai Park late in the day, ending up at Radium Hot Springs for the night.
Radium Hot Springs is famous for – of course – its hot springs. The name itself must be a little bit of a Chamber of Commerce nightmare. It probably seemed like a great moniker back in the day, but radium has different connotations to us today than it did when you could buy seltzer bottles with radium linings to produce “irradiated” water. I managed to find a nice, clean motel. There were about a dozen motorcycles in the parking lot – this is a major destination for cruisers before heading up the parkway into the two national parks. Despite the fact that they looked a bit on the tough side, the bikers turned out to be very friendly, and were quite forthcoming with advice on good places to eat and ride. Most were impressed with the fact that I was returning from Alaska – this is more an area for day or weekend trippers from Edmonton or Calgary.
After a good dinner at an Austrian restaurant (Helna’s Stube – a bit pricy but excellent food) and an even better night’s sleep, I woke on the early side, determined to make some distance. The next part of the route was to head down through southeastern British Columbia to the tiny town of Roosville, where I crossed back into the US. From there I rode down to Glacier National Park. I had heard about the Going to the Sun Highway, built in the 1930s, and supposedly one of the really wonderful drives in the west. What I didn’t realize was that this road is also a magnet for all of the tourists who consider Banff and Jasper too far to drive (plus adding the hassle of crossing the border). Everyone and their mother seemed to be on that tiny two-lane road that snaked its way up to Larson Summit, at around 6500 feet. The Park Service does what it can to keep the traffic down – they have frequent shuttle buses that traverse the route, including some that are replicas of the 1930s era red buses that tourists originally took over the pass. Be that as it may, pick-ups, RVs, motorcyclists, and minivans clogged the road. There were frequent turnouts, but many eschewed them, preferring to jam on the brakes in the middle of the road to drink in the magnificent scenery for a few seconds before continuing up the steep grade. For the motorcyclist following them, this was quite problematic – bikes work best when they have some forward momentum to utilize. Having to stop suddenly on a steep upgrade, coordinate brakes and shifting, all while attempting not to burn up the clutch getting started again from a standing start (sometimes on a hairpin turn!) was a challenge. By the time I got to the summit I was cursing my decision to do the road. Oddly, on the downward side I didn’t have any such problems, and I started to make some good time.
After reaching St. Mary’s, I headed down for US 2, the main route across northern Montana. It’s a two-lane road, but impeccably maintained, and I was able to motor along at 75, only slowing down when I came to the infrequent towns – Browning, Cut Bank, Chester, Gildford, Havre, Chinook, Harlem, Malta, Saco, Hinsdale, and Glasgow. I should have filled the tank in Malta, not realizing that on July 4th Eve the sole gas station in many of the towns I passed through would be closed for the night. I was showing “Empty” or very close to it when I pulled into Hinsdale and found a convenience store still open, thanks in part to a rodeo that was being held in town. Pick-up trucks filled with teenagers were cruising both of the streets of the town, and I was able to fill the tank. It had rained late in the afternoon, and as the sun broke beneath the clouds, there was a glorious sunset. The road was damp, but the air was cool and I was enjoying looking at the cloud formations and the quality of the light. Finally, around 10:00 p.m., I pulled into Glasgow and decided to give it up for the night – it was too dark to see the road easily, and I was worried about deer wandering onto the roadway. I spent the night at La Casa Motel, in their last available room.
I woke early – around 4:30 a.m. – as it got light. I decided to get a really early start and see if I could make the Twin Cities by evening. Letting my GPS route me, I dropped down due south from Wolf Point to Circle on Montana 13, which had hardly a single curve in it for 50 miles. Then it was another 50 miles southeast to Glendive, where I picked up Interstate 94. From there, I put the bike on cruise control, and rode the rest of the day through eastern Montana, across North Dakota, through Fargo and Moorhead, and down to the Twin Cities, arriving around 7:30 p.m.-- in time to join Marie, her mother, and friends for a barbecue at the Freshmans’ house.
On this last day I had ridden through cloudy, cool weather; light rain from Bismarck to Jamestown, South Dakota; and increasingly hot and humid weather when I crossed into Minnesota. I noticed a lot of motorcycles as I got closer to Minnesota – with almost no one wearing much in the way of protective gear –tee-shirts, no helmets, no boots. Even in the heat and humidity I was quite comfortable in my gear, thanks to the mesh Kevlar my suit is made of.
So, after a few hours of socializing, and realizing that I was dog tired, I got back on the bike and started to head home. As I crossed the rebuilt Interstate 35 bridge, at 10:00 p.m., the Minneapolis fireworks started, lighting up the sky. I pulled off, and turned down towards St. Anthony Main, where I watched the rest of the display from the saddle of my bike for twenty more minutes. I looked at my odometer – the mileage for the day was at 776 miles, which seemed vaguely patriotic. Total mileage for the day, when I finally reached home – 780 miles, a new record for me.
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