Okay, So It Was Hyperbole. But We Did Have to Stop.

11:16 AM - Oct. 4, 2006 - Add to the Wildness

This is a prime illustration of the extremes of Canada. And all within a day's driving.

We went down through Calgary in the hopes of catching the Zoo, but it was cold, rainy, and I was very, very sick. We were going to visit with some homeschool friends, and decided not to inflict our germs on them. Little did I know, I was about to go spreading Manitoba pathogens across the Lower Mainland for the remainder of the trip.

We had a quick supper as we passed through the city, and Breakneck decided to keep driving. There was lots of time before the kids would need to go to bed, right? And they could sleep in the truck, right? So we could make Banff tonight, right?

Ha ha ha, buddy. Sometime around 8:00, the rain turned to big, fat, fluffy flakes, the roads turned to slush, and even the killer attack semi drivers (more on those later) with the big stickers that say "How's My Driving? Call 1-800.... I Dare You To Report Me And See If I Don't Run You Down" were slowed to 50 km/h (that's about 30 miles per hour, you southerners).

Banff lingered an hour in the distance or more. The snow was thick, the kids were nervous. Breakneck was tired, but when he's tired, he gets stubborn. When he gets stubborn, he does stupid things. Like stay on the road when we should be off the road.

Finally, though the rest of us couldn't talk him into it, the road itself convinced him to give it up. It was going to ice up at any time. We pulled in at Canmore and paid through the nose for a site with services we didn't need. But the heater worked, and we all snuggled down to bed as the snow kept falling around us.

We'd been on the Alberta plains last time we'd had daylight. So the kids woke up in the morning to this:

They were thoroughly astonished. They went outside to four inches of wet snow -- earning the admission from Breakneck that Cat wasn't crazy after all for packing mittens, hats and thick jackets. The snow was the perfect kind for doing this:

And that was as close as we dared get to the Jasper icefields. We stopped for a brief look at the Spiral Tunnels, a marvel of engineering that moves trains up the mountains by means of a spiralling underground passage. You can see a train with its tail still going one direction, its middle looping through the rock, and the engine heading the other way on up the pass. Banana Brain was fascinated with it. We got to see two trains go through, and to explain the system to some flabbergasted Australians. (The picture below is all one train, looping back on itself.)

The roads had cleared, but there were warnings of snow over Rogers Pass for that night, so we hurried onward, with Dave thinking of the sharp roads, steep climbs and precipitous passes of Yellowstone.

This is the part where I grin. Because the Canadians have engineered their major land transportation route straight through the Rockies, it just ain't like that. Breakneck was almost disappointed when we crested the summit of Rogers. It's a multi-laned, smooth, gently sloping road with a chalet and hotel and an all-night restaurant at the height of the pass.

No vertigo-inducing switchbacks. No wretched drop-offs with guardrails knocked out by the latest landslide or avalanche. (Every year, we send our military out there to knock down the avalanches in controlled fashion to keep the highways open and running smoothly.) We actually got to see some of this incredible engineering in progress as we went past Golden, east of Rogers. Note the size of the cars next to the new bridge supports.

Welcome to Canada, baby. We do things in style here.

Next: We find a midsummer dream all in the same day....