‘Ksan to Saskatoon

June 17, 2019

After leaving ‘Ksan campground we spent one night at Purden Lake Provincial Park (close to Prince George). Purden Lake was pretty but had tons of mosquitos. We struggled to survive dinner and campfire.

Next we drove to Jasper National Park for 2 nights at Wabasso Campground. Regarding Jasper: Wow, wow, wow! Beautiful. We went to hang out with the Knights at an H.I. (Hostels International) in the town of Jasper. Miriam almost exploded in anticipation of seeing Maya. The hostel itself is brand new and not even complete constructing. It is huge and offered plenty of kitchen and dining/lounging space for us to prepare dinner and eat it. It was a lovely reunion.

The next morning we drove out and hiked Maligne Canyon with the Knights. I know we’ve seen several spectacular canyons on this trip but here was another one with its own beauty. We climbed to a nice lookout for lunch near Fifth Bridge. Here I showed the Knights our tapir figurine. Maya took him to play with and he ended up falling off a log and hiding in brush and we forgot him there (The next morning Amy and I would awake at 6am and retrieve him. Phew — he is reunited with our family!)

After Maligne we hiked the Old Fort Point Loop. Near the top there was a majestic male big horn sheep grazing. He watched us for a while while grazing and then sat down for a rest from all that eating. The view of Jasper from the top was superb. This was the first time I would see the incredible turquoise water colour that results from the rock flour mineral in melted snow and glacier fun off.

That night the Knights came to our campground for dinner (tacos) and a campfire. We also hung around at the Athabasca River which was a one minute walk from the campsite. The kids had S’mores. Ryan and I had hotdogs while the kids were playing Truth or Dare at the river.

The next morning after Amy and I retrieved Tapir we left with the Knights for Banff. We couldn’t help ourselves (because of the beauty) and had to stop multiple times to enjoy the view. Some of us dipped feet into the icy glacier water. We hiked to the Athabasca Glacier. Several signs showing how far the glacier had extended to in the 1890s all the way to 2006 were posted in the ground. I think the parking lot where we parked was around the 1950s. We took a pic of Lucy beside the 2006 marker since it is her birth year.

The Lake Louise environs are absolutely mental with people. At around 4pm we couldn’t get in to drive the 14km to Moraine Lake because the traffic managing kids (university students working for a traffic management company) weren’t allowing cars to go since supposedly the parking lot was full.

We went to see Lake Louise herself and the famous Fairmont Hotel instead. It is very pretty but insane with people. There was more than a dozen red rental canoes floating around with people in them in the lake. Maya, Sophie and Miriam waded around in the freezing water. Eventually we did the short hike alongside the lake to the other side. I still can’t get over how amazing the turquoise colouring is.

By the time we got back to the cars it was 7pm and easy to get to Moraine Lake as the blockade was gone. We made a quick dinner because the Knights were leaving to visit with friends in Canmore. We walked as a family after dinner to the lookout over the lake. It is gorgeous (turquoise again), perhaps even nicer than Lk. Louise because there’s less people. We saw a photographer, bride and groom heading to the lookout as we were leaving. Amy remarked to the bride “Must be nice to live close enough to have your wedding pictures taken here.” The bride replied: “Actually we don’t live close.” It was a Wednesday, there was no wedding party in evidence, so perhaps they were just faking some wedding photos here because it’s so beautiful.

We drove the hour to Two Jack Campground in Banff to tent for the night, arriving at 10pm. Next morning was our latest sleep in of our trip: 9:40am. I guess that’s what it takes to recover from hanging out with the Knights. We did the C-level Cirque hike (about 4km) which has old mining holes (with fence around them) along the path and a stunning view. Then we went to the Banff Upper Hot Springs. I love hot springs so of course it was nice, but Iron Mountain in Colorado gets the overall prize. Here there was just one pool (39 C, 102 F) and so one didn’t have the temperature choice like at Iron Mountain. There was a thunderstorm that evening but fortunately our campsite was right beside a picnic shelter that even provided free electricity for cooking our Greek chicken packages.

The next morning we drove to Drumheller. The old miner’s shack Amy found via Air BnB is superb. The owner Grant came by and he confirmed that it had actually been a miner’s shack. The evening was spent FaceTiming family and watching Wonder Woman on the included Netflix.

Saturday at 10am we went to the Royal Tyrell to meet the Knights and explore the museum together. The museum is mind blowing. Of course the dinosaur reconstructions from fossils are second to none. The layout of the museum was designed with great thought — you walk through the different eras or epochs and see what was there at that time. I also loved the 12X of real scale underwater imitation room that had really ancient organisms found in Burgess Shale. It looked like an alien world.

We also walked a Badlands trail outside and picnicked. The we went to Wayne (a town) which takes 11 bridges to cross and features the Last Chance Saloon. It was packed with bikers (mostly Harley riders) on a ride raising money for kids with cancer. There was a wedding going on too. We visited the pedestrian suspension bridge leading to an old mine as well. It was very wobbly to walk across.

That evening the Knights came over for drinks and dinner. Our cabin was just 700m from their motel so they walked. We partied late into the night while the kids played games and entertained themselves.

Sunday morning we drove down to the end of our street where the world’s largest dinosaur is. For $10.50 our family climbed to the top. Then we head out for Saskatchewan.

We’re staying at Gordon Howe Campground in Saskatoon. Yes, this is the Gordie Howe that played hockey for the Detroit Redwings. He grew up in Saskatoon and everything here is called “The Gordon Howe...” (as in the Gordon Howe Sports Complex and Fields), not Gordie Howe.

The man at the checkin and general store at the campground was curiously named Gordon too. Books on Gordie Howe were available to buy among the groceries and camping supplies. An old newspaper from Saskatoon with full page colour photo of Gordie proclaiming him “Athlete of the Century” was mounted on the counter, as was Gordie’s goal/assist records for every year he played in the NHL, lest any questions arise from campground guests.

The campground is pretty. It has a playground the girls spent some time playing at and the nicest comfort station ever.

Monday we headed to downtown Saskatoon. Unfortunately their modern art museum is closed Mondays. We had ice cream at a little stand by the river that also sold burgers and had a Ukrainian menu offering pierogies, sausages and barszc (borstze) with a dinner roll.

We then drove to the WDM (Western Development Museum). This place was fantastic — Canada’s equivalent to the Oregon Trail Terminus but with so much more. You enter into a recreated street circa 1850s - 1930s complete with hardware store, doctor office, dentist office, general store, bank, photography studio, barber shop, RNWMP (Royal North Western Mounted Police) station, train station complete with steam engine to name a few things.

There was a separate room with dozens of cars, tractors and limousines including a Ford Model T, a 1976 Ford Grand Torino similar to my parents’ first car in Canada, a homebuilt camping trailer from the 1930s and a Model T modified into a snowmobile.

The girls spent about 45 minutes talking to each other with one of them at a museum phone booth and the other at an old operator switchboard. The car section also included a “Straw Gas” vehicle with a gigantic tank on the top of it that stored gases captured from processing straw to run the car — weird. There was also steam cars and even a steam homemade motorcycle from the 1980s and electric cars from the 1980s too.

There was a room put together in 2017 for Canada’s 150th birthday dedicated to Polish immigrants and the history of Polish people in Canada. It had around a dozen display boards including one from the Solidarnosc era when my family came over. It was very well done.

The museum also had a self-guided tour showing what life was like for a typical hypothetical family immigrating to Saskatchewan in the 1800s and following them for 4 generations. Included was life during the depression and dust bowl of the 1930s. There was even an old car the girls sat in that it was explained that it had its motor removed and reigns attached so it could be pulled by horses when the owner couldn’t afford gasoline. Apparently this was not uncommon during the depression.

Back at our camp we met a man from Sweden traveling around the world on a Yamaha motorcycle with Norwegian license plates. His name is Robert. He’s only been riding since May 7th and plans to ride for another 1.5 to 2 years. He’s going to Alaska, then down the west coast of the US to central and South America. Later he will traverse Russia, Kazakhstan and a bunch more countries with names ending in stan in that area. He’s really enjoyed Newfoundland so far despite the cold typical in May. He went shopping when he realized his clothes weren’t warm enough. He’s rode 13,000km so far but his complete journey should require 120,000 km in total. Pretty cool. We fed him some pierogy appetizers. We had bought 2 dozen homemade pierogies at the campground store because this is Saskatchewan and pierogies are a staple food available everywhere and the kids (especially) love them.

Bobsled from a movie you may have seen (Calgary)