Chapter 12: North to (not) Alaska (yet)!
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| June 9-14: Glacier National Park to Lake Louise |
June 11, Wednesday: 78.0 miles (3503.9)
"Whew! Another day among days. It feels like I started the third leg of the journey today; I'm heading north, and I'm back in Canada! I entered British Columbia this morning, which also means I'm now in Pacific Standard Time, 3 hours behind Connecticut."
"I was worried that I might not have the required amount of money to enter, but the customs man didn't say anything when I said $600, so I guess that was enough. That was a big relief."
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| The scenery continued to be stunning... I can see why they call it 'Beautiful B.C.' |
"My 'Trip Magic' seems to have returned. I stopped at a provincial park, but they were charging $3 a night. I went in anyway, hoping I could get out of it somehow. It was actually a terrible place - the gravel wouldn't take tent stakes, the outhouses were smelly, there was no view, and a whole 10th grade class was camping there, making an unholy racket."
"I worked on my bike; I took apart the rear axle and the crank, because I was getting an atrocious grinding noise today. I wish I had bought new gears and a chain and especially new bearing cones for the spare axle I got in Whitefish, because one of the cones is badly pitted - perhaps the source of the noise."
"Anyway, back to the trip magic: I was hoping no one would come around to collect the $3, but someone did, so I told him I couldn't afford it and that I would leave, whereupon he told me about a place a few miles up the road where I could camp for free. It turned out to be a spectacular place, beside a lake, with an amazing view of the mountain range I had been seeing for the last few hours of riding. And I had it all to myself!"
June 12, Thursday 85 miles (3588.9)
I wrote letters till noon, including one to my older brother, in response to his letter lamenting the constraints of his more traditional life path, compared with my freedom. This was part of my letter:
"The view from my tent door consists of a small, crystal clear lake, and behind it a ridge of mountains, their lower elevations clothed in dark deep green, which I have learned to recognize as mature spruce/fir forest, broken here and there by light green patches where avalanches have prompted newer deciduous growth, and their peaks a reddish rock, highlighted by patches of snow. Yes, you might well be envious.
BUT... 'Life ain't no ride on no pink duck.' Don't lose sight of the things you have that I don't, and won't for many years (if ever) have. Think about how it feels to know that most of my high school classmates just graduated from college. Think about how scary college looks now, after 4 years of not going to school. Think about how it feels to know that you will soon be married and have a home, knowing how far away those things are for me."
"The late start meant I got to Radium pretty late. I was a bit disillusioned - I pushed pretty hard to get here, and it's just an awful tourist trap. I ended up pulling my bike up a bank, hiding, feeling paranoid, and not being able to set up my tent. For dinner I had a can of Beefaroni cold, and a cheese sandwich - pretty depressing in itself. It rained this afternoon, as it has for the last 3 days, only more."
June 13, Friday 47.9 miles (3636.8)
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| Today I saw bighorn sheep and a bunch of mountain goats. |
"I was bewildered and not sure what to do this morning. I rode up to the hot springs, back down to the Kootenay Forest entrance, and then started back up the hill. I had very little food, but didn't want to wait 2 or 3 hours for stores in Radium to open. I heard there is a store 35 miles into Banff National Park, so I went there."
"All they had that interested me was cheese and salami, so I got that. I should have gotten more, because I ate most of it by tonight and won't have much for tomorrow."
"I was so tired today that I stopped by a guardrail, sat down on the shoulder of the road, and slept. A little while later I met a biker from Banff, and we talked and talked, until it was so late neither of us felt like riding, so we just ducked into the woods and set up camp, and continued talking till long after dark."
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| Camping in the woods with a biker from Banff |
June 14, Saturday: 35? miles (3670.0 *odometer malfunction)
This seemed like two days - one being the ride to Lake Louise, and the other being the rest of the day, which I spent with 3 people I met there, including one who is also named Buzz! This Buzz is a woman, though; Sandy Buzby. She is with another woman, Suzy Lee. They're traveling around on bikes and trains. The third person is Steve, from Australia, who's hitchhiking all over Canada, the US, and Europe too, I guess.
We all went to a picnic area and camped back in the woods, though it was only midday. We spent the afternoon talking, eating crackers and cheese, and generally lounging around. When the traditional afternoon thunderstorm rolled thru, we all got into my tent (because it was the biggest) and had a cozy time there talking and laughing.
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| Suzy Lee, Sandy "Buzz" Buzby, and hitchhiker Steve |
June 15, Sunday: 20? (3686.0)
"Perhaps the hardest day of the trip since the first day. Sue, Buzz, Steve and I went up to the lake Lake Louise (as opposed to the town) and chummed around up there, people-watching and enjoying the incredible scenery.
Then we came back into town, and the three of them snuck their laundry and my T-shirt into the staff washing machine at one of the posh hotels nearby. The time was approaching when Buzz and Sue were due to leave for Vancouver on the train. I told Buzz how I felt - about the briefness of contact, the prospect of being alone again, and the fear that maybe why I'm not as excited as I would expect to be, about the incredible stuff I'm seeing, is that I'm burned out on traveling, and if that's the case, what's the rest of the trip going to be like?
A few days ago, when I was riding in the rain, I found myself wishing I were the engineer on the train that was going by, just because he didn't have to worry about the weather. I started singing 'I've been too long in the rain.'
Anyway, at some point Buzz suggested that I go to Vancouver with her and Sue, and ride down the West Coast to San Francisco. It started out as a joke, I guess, but it wasn't long before it was a very serious consideration - one I really had to struggle with.
I went to the train station with them, but after some tears and talking and hard thought, I knew that I couldn't do it. I realized that if I abandoned my goal, it would mostly be to avoid the pain of being alone again, and that later I would feel I had copped out. It was complicated by a desire to just be spontaneous, but I didn't want to do it only for the sake of spontaneity either.
After I made the decision, the mood lightened, and the four of us went about making the most of the time we had left together, throwing stones and playing on the tracks. The train was late and when it finally came, we said goodbye, laughing so we wouldn't cry, and then Steve and I walked slowly away from the train station, feeling, as Steve put it best, "helpless."
We were stunned and lonely and sad, and together we walked slowly back to town, Steve with his backpack and I walking my bike - I didn't even feel like riding it. We both remarked again and again, as much to ourselves as to each other, about how nice Sue and Buzz were. I suddenly liked Steve a lot, and was really glad for his company.
I wanted to call [my close friend, the director of the Wilderness School] John, because he had asked me to call him when things were hard, and it didn't seem that things could get much harder. Steve left me at the phone booth, and I felt that I would see him again, but I don't know that I ever will. I called John's house, but he wasn't home. I tried the school, but being Sunday night, no one was there. I left the phone booth feeling like I had called Dial-a-Prayer and gotten no answer.
Not knowing what else to do, I started riding toward Jasper. After a few miles, though, I changed my mind and rode back to Lake Louise, though I didn't really know why I was doing that either.
I went to the campground looking for a biker from California we had met earlier, who said he would split the camping fee with me if I was interested. When I found him, he was playing guitar and singing, amidst a whole group of people. They ribbed me for choosing to go to Alaska instead of to California with 2 beautiful women, and then continued singing.
After a while, I got out my flute and played along on a couple of songs. The last song we sang was one of my favorites, Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere."
June 16, Monday: 63 miles (3749)
I felt better this morning. The singing last night helped a lot. I rode up and over Bow Pass - not a bad climb - and on to the Ramparts Creek Youth Hostel. The houseparents said I could stay for free if I collected the money from anyone else who came, as they needed to go to Lake Louise. I had some time to write, and then a couple from Ontario came. They shared their dinner and kept me entertained.
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| The road from Lake Louise to Jasper is called the Icefields Parkway,
because it is lined on both sides by mountains that have glaciers, aka icefields, in among their peaks. | |
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| The minerals in the meltwater from the glaciers give the lakes a startling turquoise color. |
All day I was singing "You ain't goin' nowhere," and I started making up verses to fit my trip. Sometimes I sang the chorus "Tomorrow's the day my ride's gonna end" which was sort of sad, so I started singing the last two lines "Oh lord am I gonna fly, Down into Anchorage," and thought about the day when I may do that.
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