A Collection …

Day 2 – Canada!

November 7th, 2008 Posted in 2008 Alaska trip

2008-06-15, Sunday

Pasco, WA (06:55am) to Kootenay National Park – McLeod Meadows campground (18:30 Mountain Time)

We got up pretty early this day and continue our drive north. The goal is to get to the border before any sort of rush hour (if there’s such a thing) since it will be Sunday afternoon when we cross the border. The weather is again great with cool temperature to start with and some pretty clouds. We drove thru Spokane, WA then into Idaho. This is the first time I’ve been to the state of Idaho, although David kept saying there’s not much here… We drove by a dealer who has a yellow FJ with the stock roof rack painted yellow, that was kind of weird.

After stopping at Bonners Ferry to switch driver and walk around (they have an indian casino too!) we arrived at the US-Canadian border. This would’ve been an easy/quick border crossing if David did not volunteer to the Canadian border agent that we have “bear spray”. That got us into the “holding tank” where we wait for someone to look at our bear spray. After we show the friendly border agent lady our bear spray she waved us thru and we continue our way north into Canada. At least this was quick, there’s a truck we saw at the holding tank where the agents were doing strip searches… gotta wonder what they think they have…

We arrived at Cranbrook, BC shortly and see the first of many A&W that we will be visiting for root beer float while in Canada. But first thing first, we have to stop by the bank to get some Canadian money. It seemed easier to find A&W than bank. We filled up the truck, $1.47 CAN per Liter! talk about expensive fuel before leaving the town. By now we didn’t think we will make it to our original destination for the day (Banff National park) so we planned to stay at one of the campground at Kootenay National Park. On the drive to the park we passed Columbia Lake which is the source of the Columbia river that we were following the day before yesterday.

By the time we arrived at Radium Hot Springs, which is one of those little “gateway town” into the Canadian Rockies, it was already past 5pm and the Park Canada office was closed. We decided to move on and about 30-45 minutes into the park we pulled into McLeod Meadow campground.

This is the first camping night we have since the start of the trip and it’s also the first time we’ve been in any of the Canadian campgrounds. They are a bit different than the California campground we are used to: for example, they sell a fire permit here which is the same as paying for firewood. There’s also a kitchen shelter with wood stove, neither of us know how to use it tho. The campground hosts came by and chatted with us a bit and give us some pointers on how to pay for the park fees since we missed the business hour. We made some salad and have grilled Korean BBQ beef with rice for dinner. After dinner we went for a walk to check out the sights.