Mesa Verde NP

Cliff Palace dwelling at Mesa Verde

Our plans to visit Mesa Verde were a little fuzzy.  The one campground in the park seemed to be open, but all services (including water and bathrooms) closed past October 1, so it was unclear where we would stay.  When we arrived, we also found out that the park had switched over to its shorter Fall hours and would close at 5pm.  So, naturally, we stayed at the Best Western.  Which was just as well, since Hurricane Sandy was hitting NYC that night, and we got to watch The Weather Channel for 5 straight hours.

The next morning, we packed up and headed to Mesa Verde.  The park is exactly as it sounds – a large green mesa, based around several archaeological sites – the cliff dwellings of the ancestral Puebloan people.  Only the main attractions were open – the massive Cliff Palace (and the accompanying ranger tour), and the smaller Spruce Tree House.  We spent the better part of the morning checking out the two sites, which were both stunning.  It was really amazing to see these places and to think about how these people had lived.

Moab

View of Moab from the top of Portal

Jeff riding the Slickrock practice trail

Jeff, Kristen, and our friend Beth on the Mag 7 trail system

Sunset on the Island in the Sky mesa

The morning after we got engaged, the phone calls and emails started pouring in.  We spent the first 3 or 4 hours of the day on the computer and on the phone.  After that, we needed a break, so we decided to hike up the infamous Portal Trail (where there is no cell service).  Portal is an experts-only mountain bike descent whose first few hundred meters rides along a 2-3ft wide cliff, with a 1000ft drop.  People die there every year or two.  Which is we decided to hike up it rather than ride down it.  But boy was it gorgeous up there.  The top of the hike featured a wide view of Moab below, as well as the surrounding mesas and Arches NP.  We also got to watch a few people do the descent (and one ride across the cliff!).  Afterward, we were drained from the day, so we soaked in the hot tub and ate some Indian packets.

Our energy restored and the congratulatory emails tapering off, we woke up the next day feeling pretty good.  We made an ambitious plan to get a good feel for the local MTB scene, headed to Denny’s for breakfast, and hit the trail.  We started at the Monitor & Merrimac trail system, which was a dud.  It was supposed to offer some of the famous Moab ‘slickrock’ riding, but it turned out not to be the good kind of slickrock.  It was bouncy, pock-marked Entrada formation sandstone, which chatters your teeth, shakes loose the bolts on your bike, and most likely would cause Kristen’s herniated disc to flare up.  We bailed on the ride half way through.

We had next planned to ride up Klondike Bluffs, but found out it also featured Entrada sandstone, so we decided to go back to the Moab Brands trails and ride the stuff we hadn’t yet been to (primarily the Bar B trail).  Afterward, Kristen could tell I was antsy.  I had read earlier that the famous Slickrock Trail (featuring swoopy and smooth Navajo formation sandstone) had a 2-mile practice loop.  We had already decided we were not going to ride the Slickrock Trail since it was supposed to be very difficult, but this offered us a low-risk way to check it out!  So she humored me and we went, and rode until the daylight failed.  I have to say, Slickrock is really not that hard.  It has insanely steep sections that burn the legs, but in all it’s not super ‘technical’ – far different that we had expected.  I rode the entire practice loop and put my foot down only once!

We planned to leave Moab the night of the 27th.  But our friend Beth called to say she was coming in on the 28th, and would be bringing her mountain bike.  Naturally, we extended our campground reservation.

We met up with Beth and her two friends Carlos and Eunice.  Carlos suggested we ride the Gemini Bridges trails, which was a fantastic idea.  Gemini Bridges is an old Jeep road with a network of singletrack running through it.  Anyone who didn’t want to ride the singletrack (namely Carlos and Eunice) could just drop down the road.  Beth, Kristen, and I all took the singletrack.  It was pretty technical and very fun.  Beth had only been riding a few times before, and we were worried it was beyond her ability.  Nope.  She’s so athletic and such a daredevil, her early spills only encouraged her, and by the end of the ride she was popping her bike over logs and rocks like a pro.

The ride was long (20+ miles), and we finished around sunset.  The temperature started to drop, and Carlos/Eunice were not yet at the car.  We thought we might have to stage a rescue, so we went back to the top to get our Expedition (which was the only car we had that could handle the jeep road).  Turns out it was unnecessary – by the time we got back down the hill, Carlos/Eunice were already finished.  We all ate some sandwiches, had a celebratory beer, and headed back to the campsite to pass out.

Canyonlands + Engagement!

The surreal Green River Overlook

Us at Grandview Point

Engaged!

The ring!

After Arches, we spent a day mountain biking the great Moab Brand trails (until it started raining, at which point we headed to a coffee shop to hang out), had our standard Moab dinner, and planned our next day at Canyonlands NP.

Canyonlands had some of the most spectacular landscapes we have ever seen.  The Northern part of the park is situated on the Island in the Sky Mesa, which looks exactly as it sounds.  It’s a high plateau, with hundred mile views into mazes of canyons, cut by the Colorado and Green rivers and their tributaries.  It’s also remote enough (~30 miles outside Moab) that it’s empty most of the time.

Kristen knew something was up.  I was demanding to go to Dead Horse Point State Park for Sunset.  She asked, “why not the Green River Overlook for Sunset?”.  Nope, I wanted it to be Dead Horse – relatively unknown, more remote, and even lower chance of seeing another person.  The perfect spot!

We went for a quick mountain bike ride in the State Park, and then headed over to the Point to watch the Sunset.  I was nervous.  I had the ring in my pocket.  Storm clouds were brewing on the horizon and it was cold.  But the sun was hitting the clouds just so, the canyon lit up in the afternoon glow, and Kristen traced the path of the Colorado river left to right.  I took out the ring and put it in the path of her hand, just out of her vision, until she turned far enough to see it.  And she said yes!

As far as I can figure, it was a quintessential Jeff & Kristen moment.  We got engaged wearing cycling tights, matching wool beanies, and rain coats.

We spent a few seconds debating the merits of eating Indian packets and greens for dinner, but we thought better of it and went out for a nice meal.  What a day!

Arches NP

Us with the Delicate Arch

Jeff lounging in a natural window

Kristen on the rim of a sandstone bowl

Our first stop in Moab was Arches National Park.  After we got in and set up camp, we were dying to see the park, so we drove in for sunset.  It did not disappoint.

The next day, we got the full Arches experience, mostly on foot.  We drove to the back of the park to hike out to Devil’s Tower, and saw the famous Landscape Arch plus numerous other arches and windows along the way.  We then made our way over to Delicate Arch, the structure so famous it’s on the Utah license plate.  The Delicate Arch hike was fun, and we spent some time playing around in a sandstone bowl on the way up.  Tired from the previous two hikes, we warily saw the remainder of the attractions at Arches, and ate what would be our standard Moab dinner – a Trader Joe’s pre-made Indian packet poured over bagged mixed greens.  Mmm.

Bryce > Moab

View of some badlands from Route 12

View of the Escalante Canyons from Kiva Koffehouse in Grand Staircase/Escalante

The desolation on Route 24

Google wants you to take the highway to get from Bryce to Moab, but the guidebook suggests Scenic Routes 12 and 24.  The guidebook is right.

Aside from the Icefields Parkway between Banff and Jasper, Route 12/24 was the most scenic drive we did the whole trip.  Route 12 descends from Bryce Canyon into the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument.  The road started as a wide, green plain surrounded by mountains, but soon snaked its way up and down red rock canyons and on to ridges with great views.  We woke up early to do the drive at dawn, and decided to forego breakfast so we could eat our morning meal at a place we had heard about in Boulder, UT.  On the way, we passed a coffee shop we couldn’t refuse – the Kiva Koffehouse.  We couldn’t even see it from the road, but we knew we had to go based on its location.  It’s a tiny, kiva-style hut built into the side of one of the Escalante Canyons, windows on all sides, featuring commanding views of the lush surrounding area.  Wow.  We decided it would be a great place for someone to have a small wedding ceremony (wink, wink).  We continued from Kiva a few miles down the road to our original breakfast destination – the Hell’s Backbone Grill.  The food was great, but the setting simply did not compare to Kiva.

From Boulder we ascended Boulder Mountain (peaking around 9,000 feet).  There was a storm brewing, and it seemed like every 5 minutes we stopped to take pictures of the incredible surrounding landscape.  The entire experience was enhanced by the music we were playing.  Kristen’s dad Steve had given us a couple dozen CDs to listen to on this leg of the trip, and we randomly selected Eberhard Weber’s ‘The Colours of Chloe’ for our drive up Boulder Mountain.  It’s a free-flowing chamber jazz album, and for some reason, the build-ups and peaks in the music seemed to correspond to our view out of the window.  For lack of a better description, the experience was ‘transcendent’.

From there we hit Route 24, which was far more desolate, and looked more like the high desert landscape we were expecting.  At one point we came to a junction indicating we were within 20 miles of Lake Powell.  We stopped for gas and drinks there, and realized we had entered a very special part of Utah.  All locals had NRA hats on, and the cashier was cleaning a gigantic rifle behind the counter.  I was pretty glad at that point that we had not put a Sierra Club decal on our car.

The rest of the drive to Moab was fairly uneventful, though beautiful – the desert got drier and redder, and the road stretched out forever.

Bryce Canyon NP

Bryce Canyon as seen from Sunset Point

Descending into the canyon on the Navajo Loop trail

Us on the Peek-a-Boo trail

Bryce Canyon NP is just a couple hours down the road from Zion NP.  But the landscape is totally different.  Bryce doesn’t look real, or natural.  And it’s not even really a canyon, at least not an identifiable one.  It’s more like a giant bowl filled with red-and-white banded hoodoos (rock spires) and rock fins.  Some rare combination of odd geological structure and weather created the place, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were seeing something temporary.  The spires and fins are so delicate, it seems like we happen right now to be in the right place at the right geological time.  How long until it’s all eaten away?  It made us feel incredibly lucky to see it.

And, as we found out, you can hike down into the “canyon.”  We chose to descend the famous Navajo trail, which switchbacks through a narrow crease in the rock wall, and then catch the less-traveled Peek-a-Boo trail to get a good feel for the place.  The weather started to turn when we were more or less at the halfway point of the hike – about 3 or 4 miles from our car.  We watched the sky and hurried along, praying that the rain would hold off and we would not get caught in a flash flood in one of the endless narrow canyons we were walking through.  We got lucky.  It drizzled but the heavy stuff never came down.

Exhausted that night, we collapsed in our tent on what would prove to be the first of many frigid nights on the Colorado Plateau.

Zion NP

View of the Virgin River from Scout Lookout

Fall colors on the West Rim Trail

Spectacular view from the Canyon Overlook trail

We left Joshua Tree NP early in the morning and hit the road.  Again, more Mojave Desert.  Desolate as it is, it’s beautiful in its own way.  Especially after you stare at it for 5 hours straight.

Our next destination was Zion NP, for our first taste of the Colorado Plateau.  I had never been to the plateau before, so I was extremely excited.  Zion did not disappoint.

The park is fairly simple – one road, going up and down Zion canyon.  Red rocks surround, with multi-colored spires and rock formations everywhere.  The canyon walls rise 1-2,000 feet from the valley floor.  But this is true all over the plateau.  What makes Zion unique is how incredibly lush the area is.

We only had one full day in the park, so we decided to do a long-ish hike up the West Rim trail.  The trail was quite busy on the climb up to Scout Lookout, as many park visitors seemed to want to try their luck on Angels Landing – a very narrow rock outcropping with a precarious trail leading up to it.  Not for us.  We continued on the trail past Scout Lookout, and immediately we were alone.  The trail wound its way up spurs and down valleys, with incredible (and incredibly surprising) fall colors.  It was amazing to see so many leafy trees in an area we thought was the desert!  The valley bottoms were wet, and we could feel the humidity in the air.  After about 5-6 miles of hiking, we came to a natural viewpoint of the surrounding canyons and decided to turn around.  In all, I think we got a great feel for Zion that day.

The next morning, we packed up early and drove East out of the park.  However, our guidebook told us we had to hike up to one last spot, the Canyon Overlook.  The hike was short – only about an hour round trip – but the view was spectacular.  The colors of the rocks were incredibly deep in the morning sun.  What a place.

Joshua Tree

The ubiquitous Joshua trees

Beautiful sunset from our campsite

The tarantula

Our first stop on our way to the Southwest was Joshua Tree NP.

On the drive in, we stopped for coffee and lunch in Palm Springs, where it was incredibly hot and dry.  The town is pretty cute, but more remote than I had expected given its iconic status as a retirement location.

The rest of the drive was pretty much just Mojave Desert, which is a wasteland of scrub brush and nothingness.  We arrived at Joshua Tree in the early afternoon, which gave us enough time to drive the main park road and take some pictures of the ubiquitous trees and the beautiful surrounding hills.  While very pretty, we definitely did not need more than just a couple hours there – the landscape and trees are the only thing to see.

We set up camp in the park that evening and went for a walk after watching the sunset.  Kristen had read that tarantulas are known to run across the road at night, so we were hoping to see our first desert wildlife.  We were having a nice time looking at the stars and spotting constellations, when all of the sudden Kristen spotted a tarantula on the road.  Neither of us had ever seen one in the wild before, so we were pretty thrilled.  The things are pretty gross looking, though, so we snapped a quick picture and got the hell out of there.

Riverside

We chose to access the Southwest via the South – driving through California’s Central Valley and heading East out of LA.  Our first stop was in Riverside, CA, where Kristen’s sister Julie goes to college.  Julie put us up for the night in her apartment, and we had a great time hanging out with her and her friends/roommates.

Sacramento, Detroit, San Francisco

Jeff, Corey, CJ, and Kristen riding MTB at Camp Tamarancho, CA

Us at the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate

After our long trip through the Northern US and Canada, we planned to rest for a couple weeks in Sacramento.  Our ‘break’ consisted of 3 parts:

A week in Elk Grove:

We did a ton of cooking, sleeping, organizing, and hanging out with Steve and Barbara.  Steve’s friend John also came to town, which gave us an occasion to visit Apple Hill and the fantastic wineries of Shenandoah and Amador counties.

A week in Detroit:

Visiting my family, the excuse being that we had come in for Yom Kippur.  We also set up a couple road bikes we keep there and did a lot of great riding at Kensington Metropark.

A bit more time in Elk Grove, followed by a long weekend in San Francisco:

We were thrilled that two sets of our NYC friends were going to be in SF on the same weekend – CJ and Joanne (in town because Joanne was running the Nike Women’s Marathon), and Corey (in town for fun).  We rented a room in a guy’s apartment from AirBnB in the Bernal Heights neighborhood (which happened to be in the same house CJ/Joanne were staying in).  We had a great time walking around the city and watching Joanne race.  And to top it all off, we went for a 3 hour MTB ride in Marin County on Monday with CJ and Corey.

We were sad to be done with our few weeks of ‘rest’, but excited to start the next leg of our travels – the Southwest.

Lorane, OR

Some salad materials picked from Rich and Denise’s garden (+ balsamic)

Nancy with her two pet donkeys

When we were with my sister in Yellowstone, she told us that if we ever passed through Southern Oregon, we should stop at Rich & Denise’s farm (called Hey! Bales).  Rich and Denise are Keenan’s (Cara’s boyfriend’s) aunt and uncle.  They live on a farm in Lorane, OR, about 30-45 minutes West of Eugene, OR.  Keenan spent some Summers there, and Cara has stayed there a couple times as well.  She said “you just have to see how they live out there on the farm.”

Now, I’ve been interested in farming and farm life ever since I read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ years ago.  That book made me think about where my food came from, industrial vs. small-scale organic agriculture, introduced me to the concept of vegetables as a meal, and eventually led to my signing up for a CSA (a weekly delivery of vegetables from a local organic farm).  So when we heard there might be an opportunity to spend a couple days on an organic farm, we had to go.

Only one issue – we had never met Rich and Denise before (Keenan’s dad Bill would also be in town), so we were counting on their extreme willingness to let total strangers stay with them.  Cara told us they’d be happy to have us by, but you never really know with this sort of situation.  As it turns out, Cara was right – they are fabulous hosts.  And apparently they are used to visitors coming around.  Within 5 minutes of our arrival, a neighbor wandered in and asked if she could bake some potatoes in Rich and Denise’s oven.  “Of course!” Rich replied.  “Just make sure to remember and come get them in an hour, because we’ll be out.”  The sense of community and trust in that area is staggering.

The first night, Rich and Denise took us to a dinner party at their friends Joey and Nancy’s farm.  Joey and Nancy don’t have many animals anymore (save for a couple donkeys they keep as pets), but have a great garden, and cook a fabulous dinner.  What a night – we got to hear all sorts of stories about rural life (which were especially animated when Joey, who grew up in the Bronx, did impressions of his New Yorker friends’ horrified reactions to his lifestyle in the middle of nowhere).

The next day, we went for a quick hike on the hilly farm property with Denise and her friend Stephanie (who dropped by unexpectedly), and then drove briefly into Eugene to try the famous Full City Coffee Roasters.  Denise and Rich were out when we returned, so Kristen and I cooked dinner with Bill (I embarrassingly ruined a piece of fish by trying to make a pan sauce out of beer instead of wine).  We talked late into the night with the whole family.

On our final morning, we were due to leave early for Sacramento (an 8-10 hour drive).  But Rich offered to take us mountain biking, so of course we couldn’t resist.  Beforehand, though, he wanted to tour us around the farm.  We helped harvest some lettuce.  It was a blast.

We were sad to leave.  What a lifestyle – living on a large piece of land in the mountains, eating delicious food that you grow yourself, living among a community of neighbors you trust.  It’s pretty idyllic.  We want to go back.

Portland

Kristen framed by the St John’s bridge in Cathedral Park

Randy standing on a sculpture at the Portland Water Pollution Control Lab

Our Voodoo Doughnuts haul – old fashioned glazed, Mexican hot chocolate, maple bacon, and Portland Cream

After the wedding in Seattle, we planned to begin heading South to Sacramento to take a break from traveling.  But on the way, we were excited to make a couple of stops.  The first was in Portland to visit Kristen’s cousin Randy, his girlfriend Jessica, and their two parrots, Soda Pop and Pickle.

We didn’t have too much planned for our time in Portland – we mostly wanted to hang out with Randy and Jessica, see a bit of Portland, and maybe go for a bike ride or two.  Luckily, we came at the right time – Randy is currently studying for his master’s at Portland State, and school was not yet in full swing for the semester, so we got to spend almost all our time with him.  He was a great host – Randy took us to see the PSU campus and showed us some of his work, toured us around the city, and took us to a few hidden gems (most notably Cathedral Park, which is a greenspace framed by the arch-shaped pylons of the St John’s bridge on the North side of town).  We also visited a few Portland landmarks: Powell’s books, Voodoo Doughnuts (the originator of the gourmet doughnut trend), a couple square blocks of food carts (home of the $5 delicious lunch), and the fabulous urban wilderness park (designed by Olmsted, but far more raw than Central or Prospect parks).

All in all, Portland was shockingly . . . normal.  Not at all like the caricature portrayed in Portlandia.  There were fewer and less aggressive fixed-gear bike messengers than in NYC, the food was eclectic and understated, and the hipsters we saw didn’t even look like homeless people (like they do in Seattle).  In retrospect I guess I’m not sure what I expected – people living in trees?  Hipsters occupying credit unions?  Guys with waxed mustaches riding their fixies around with free-range chicken coops strapped to the back?  Maybe I didn’t imagine it to that degree, but what we got was quite the opposite – Portland is really, really nice.

Seattle – Brian & Cathy’s Wedding

Our travels found us in Seattle, for the wedding of our friends Brian and Cathy.  Brian was Jeff’s roommate both in college and in New York.  The wedding was beautiful, the food was great, and above all, many of our friends were together in once place.  It’s easy to forget how much fun we have when we’re all together.

Olympic National Park

The Hoh Rainforest – where everything is covered in moss

First Beach at Sunset

We left Victoria early in the morning and took the ferry to Port Angeles, Washington, on the Northern end of the Olympic peninsula.  We stopped for a quick lunch and a coffee, and then headed West to Olympic National Park.

The West side of the park is pretty remote – there is barely a gas station to speak of, and it’s a good 4-5 hour drive from Seattle, making it inaccessible for a day trip.  There is one small town, though.  Forks, WA.  Which, we learned, is the setting for the Twilight series.  When we drove through, they had a big banner that read “Welcome to Stephanie Meyer Appreciation Day!”.  We didn’t see a parade or anything, though.

We made our way down to our planned oceanside campsite, but when we arrived, there were warnings posted about a black bear that had been coming into the campsite.  Nope, not for us.  So we instead drove North to the Hoh Rainforest park entrance, and up the 12 mile park road to the Hoh Campground.

Once we arrived, we realized we’d forgotten to get groceries.  All we really had left was soup and cheese quesadilla materials.  And we were probably an hour from the nearest store.  So we had cheese quesadillas for dinner, cheese quesadillas for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly quesadillas for lunch, and then we couldn’t take it anymore and drove to Forks to get some salad mix for dinner the next night.

We spent 2 nights in all at the Hoh Campground.  Our first day in the park, we did a nice 5 mile hike in the Hoh Rainforest.  The Hoh Rainforest is a pretty interesting place.  It’s one of the largest temperate rainforests on the continent, and EVERYTHING is covered in moss.  It hangs from the trees and lies on the ground, and pushes up near the banks of the Hoh River.  It’s very beautiful.  We also got extremely lucky with the weather – sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s.

After our hike in the woods, we decided we wanted to see a sunset on the coast.  A park ranger pointed us toward First Beach, which was about an hour drive and a 1 mile hike away.  It was totally worth it – the beach was fairly remote, framed by bluffs, with a natural arch and sea stacks all around.  We took our salad mix with us for a picnic dinner on the beach.

The next morning, we got up very early in order to do a big hike on the East side of the park, with views of the Puget Sound and the Cascade volcanoes.  We drove back the way we came – through Forks and Port Angeles.  Forks still had that “Stephanie Meyer Appreciation Day” banner up – apparently every day in Forks is Stephanie Meyer Appreciation Day.  Eventually we came to a series of winding, one lane dirt roads leading directly up the side of a mountain to the trailhead.

When we arrived at the trailhead, two things happened.  First, the air was so thick with smoke we could smell it.  Apparently there was a large forest fire on the Eastern side of the Cascades, and the smoke was being sucked into the Puget Sound area.  It killed any views we might get from the top, and we weren’t too keen on breathing lungfulls of smoke for 4 hours, either.

But none of that mattered, because of the second thing that happened.  The trail was closed due to ‘aggressive mountain goat activity’.  There were ranger postings from early June saying that the deep winter snowpack had reduced the local mountain goat habitat, and they had been hanging out on the trail.  They were apparently approaching hikers aggressively to defend their food supply.  But it had been a month and a half since the trail closure, and all the snow was gone!  Why was it still closed?  We got out of the car to read the full ranger report, wandered around the trailhead area, and discussed whether or not we should just go ahead and do the hike.  And then, all of the sudden, we heard hoofbeats scrambling up the mountainside.  Aggressive mountain goats!  We both sprinted for the car and immediately drove out of there.  Screw that hike.

We drove to Tacoma and did a mountain bike ride in a local park instead.

Victoria

The “Sunken Garden” at Butchart Gardens

Kristen in the “Italian Garden” at Butchart Gardens

Us at East Sooke Regional Park, looking across the strait of Juan de Fuca at the Olympics

After leaving Whistler, we drove through Vancouver and took the ferry to Victoria.  Victoria is situated on a large island (Vancouver Island) off the coast of British Columbia, just a few miles from Washington State (across the Strait of Juan de Fuca).  In fact, you can usually see Washington’s Olympic Peninsula from many parts of Victoria.

We came to Victoria for the gardens – Butchart Gardens.  The gardens tend to be the first thing people ask you about if you mention you’ve been to Victoria.  “Oh, did you go to the gardens?”

So we went the first afternoon.  The day was pretty cloudy and chilly, so the grounds were empty – we more or less had the whole place to ourselves.  And it was beautiful!  The grounds are broken into several areas, each with its own theme – the Sunken Garden (set in an old limestone quarry), the Rose Garden (with what had to be hundreds of rose varieties), the Japanese Garden, the Italian Garden, the Mediterranean Garden, and plenty of other smaller areas in between.  They had flowers, trees, and plants we’d never seen before, all arranged beautifully.

We visited in the late afternoon – Kristen’s mom and grandmother had advised we should budget 2-3 hours to walk the entire thing – and then I took Kristen on a date to the restaurant on the garden grounds.  We ate dinner as the sun was setting, and the food turned out to be fantastic (flowers in the butter!).  After dinner we re-visited our favorite parts of the garden, all of which had been lit up in a nighttime display.

The next day, we drove into downtown Victoria to take a look around (we were staying at a campsite in a provincial park about 30 minutes away).  After a few hours of walking around, we had seen most of the major attractions of the city – seaplanes landing in the small bay near downtown, the BC capital building, the Empress Hotel, a walk around the bay, and a nice coffee shop near the water.  By that point, we were starting to get a little antsy for the great outdoors.

So we picked up a free map of the area and looked for a local park near the shore.  As it turned out, the East Sooke Regional Park was about 45 minutes West, and looked like it would offer great views of the Olympic Peninsula.  It did.  We drove around the edge of the park, and then did a quick 2 mile hike down to the bluffs on the shore.  The views were incredible.  Our outdoor senses satisfied, we grabbed a pizza and headed back to our campsite.

Whistler

Vegetables!  Prepared in an actual kitchen!

Kristen looking out over Green Lake on the Rainbow-Sproatt Flank Trail

After 3 or so solid weeks living in a tent in the wilderness, we decided to rent a condo for 5 days in Whistler, BC.

The drive from Jasper was gorgeous (there did not seem to be any sort of large valley between the Rockies and the coast ranges like there is further south).

When we arrived, the place felt impossibly luxurious.  Our own bathroom!  That we can use at any time of night without having to go outside!  A real kitchen!  Heat and AC!  A real bed!  I think we both felt almost a little ashamed to have so much convenient stuff all to ourselves.

We went a little nuts on the food.  I should preface this by saying that at the start of the trip, we had fantastical ideas of what we would be able to cook at our campsites (we even brought a couple cookbooks).  By August, they turned out to be just that – fantasy.  Simmering a pot of wild rice for an hour over a finicky propane stove is a huge bummer when it’s 40 degrees outside and the wind is blowing.  Our campsite meals had degraded to the old standbys – a can of Amy’s Organic soup and some quesadillas.

So when we got to Whistler, we cooked every meal, and pounded the vegetables.  We had salads, roasted root vegetables, wild rice pilaf, hearty grain bread dipped in olive oil and vinegar, pancakes for breakfast, and sometimes a nice piece of meat to share each night.  And, since storage wasn’t an issue, we also got to try a few different bottles of wine while we were staying there!

Aside from the food, Whistler was a blast.  We went for mountain bike rides every day, mostly on the local Frank Zappa trails near lost lake, with one long ride up the Rainbow-Sproatt Flank Trail.  It had been a month or two since we’d last ridden, so we were rusty.  But by the end of the trip, we were riding better than we ever had.  We also went for long walks through the village and surrounding areas each day.

After a few weeks in the wilderness, Whistler felt like paradise.  We didn’t want to leave.

Parks Canada – WTF, eh?

Canada appears to manage its national parks in an . . . odd . . . way.

We’ve been to a number of national parks in the US over the past couple of months, and we pretty much know what to expect at this point.  The US seems to treat its national parks as extremely sensitive land, with minor, controlled commercial development, a rustic, wilderness feel, with strict boundaries and rules, and plenty of rangers and park personnel around.  You know when you’ve entered park land because there are only a few roads in and out, all with manned booths.  There are generally few/no services around – it can be quite frustrating to stay in a national park for days on end because it’s hard to buy the things you need.  But for us, that all adds to the rustic feel of the parks – you are closer to nature, and closer to the past.

So imagine our surprise when we drove West from Calgary to Banff national park:

- A major expressway artery runs through the park (so major it’s called Highway 1).  You don’t know when you’ve entered the park (maybe there was a sign?).  There was a booth a number of miles in (apparently blocking part of the expressway?), but I’m not clear that you had to purchase a parks pass to drive the highway.

- An expressway in the middle of an area that is supposed to function as a diverse wildlife refuge?  Seriously?  No question they’re dividing animal populations and restricting habitat with that one.  They have installed some ‘wildlife overpasses’ to let animals cross over the highway, so I guess that’s a step in the right direction, but seems pretty optimistic as a fix.

- Why are there major towns in the middle of a national park?  The town of Banff is pretty chichi, with expensive shops and restaurants, a mall, and more ice cream shops per block than our previous high-water mark, Bar Harbor.  (Ice cream shops per block is our personal ‘index of touristiness’).  The parks in the US sometimes have small towns on their flanks, and you can occasionally get lucky and find a grocery store inside the park boundary.  Yet there are 3 ski areas in Banff national park!

- Lake Louise, which is a gorgeous, milky blue glacial lake about 45 minutes North of Banff, has a massive Four Seasons-like development at its base.  There was a guy playing the harp in the lobby.  Why is this in a national park, right at the border of a major natural wonder?  We thought national parks were supposed to be unspoiled and affordable to a nation’s populous.

- During our 2 weeks in 3 Canadian national parks, we did not see one person we could legitimately call a ranger.  Sometimes they had huts near trailheads where rangers were supposed to be, but nobody was ever in them.  This is grizzly bear country!  Who deals with the wildlife?  Who makes sure all these tourists don’t wreck the landscape?  Nobody we saw.

- In Jasper, we saw a number of people box in a bull elk to take pictures of it, until it got angry and started howling, scaring it into a road where traffic had luckily stopped.  In Glacier, two park rangers were on scene when we were viewing 2 grizzly bears playing in the water near the side of the road 300+ feet away or so, and told us to vacate the area when the bears got out of the water because they needed more space.

Apologies for the diatribe here.  We wondered these things in hushed tones while we were visiting the parks, unsure if we were being too critical.  But now, we feel somewhat vindicated in our assessment.  Kristen has been reading a book on grizzly attacks, which points out that the ridiculous nature of Banff’s extreme (for a national park) development, the expressway, and some poor wildlife management decisions, had historically created circumstances in which bears could become particularly dangerous in the area (it’s been better in recent years due to some drastic changes in practice).

Not that the US national park system doesn’t have any issues – but when you enter a park in the States, you at least know what it’s supposed to represent.  The national parks we visited in Canada felt like, well, everywhere else in Canada.

Jasper

Panoramic view from the top of Bald Hills, near Maligne Lake

Us at the top of Sulphur Peak, near Miette Hot Springs

Athabasca River with its characteristic serpentine twists near Mt. Kerkeslin

Jasper NP is like a smaller version of Banff.  The town itself is smaller, there are fewer things to do, and there are less people.  Even over Labor Day, when we were in town, the place wasn’t exactly packed.  And one other thing we noticed: it’s frigging freezing. No wonder – it’s at 53 degrees North latitude. But even so, nightly near-freezing temperatures in late August/early September? Good thing we got that zero-degree double-occupancy sleeping bag.

It is, however, spectacular.  The views are similar to Banff, with glaciated peaks and mountain lakes all around.  And the town itself is nice, with a good array of shops, bakeries, coffee houses, and restaurants.

Our time in the park was spent in a similar fashion to Banff, with as much hiking as possible:

Day 1: rainy and cold. We hung out at a local bakery/coffee shop in the morning, and then drove to check out some in-town sites – Patricia Lake, Pyramid Lake, Edith Lake, and Annette Lake. Each has a small network of walking paths near and around it, so we tried to find the gaps in the rain and do a bit of wandering.

Day 2: Maligne Lake area.  There was a bear advisory on the route we originally chose (Opal Hills), so we hiked up the other side of the meadow, to a ridge in the Bald Hills.  And boy are we glad we did!  Maligne Lake has completely different sights on either side of it – gorgeous glaciated peaks on one side, and far more eroded, smoother peaks on the other.  Our hike ended up taking us to the top of the eroded side, so we got spectacular views of the picturesque side across the valley.  The only issue was that we saw a large pile of fresh grizzly bear scat at the bottom of the trail, which made for a somewhat nerve-racking time until we reached the tree line.  After the hike, we drove over to an area known for mountain goats – the Kerkeslin Goat Lick.  We spotted a number of them, impossibly high on the mountainside, and then saw one close up wandering around near the road!

Day 3: Miette Hot Springs area.  This place has a pool that is fed by hot springs water and was thus jammed with people, so we avoided that part of the area.  Instead, we did a short but difficult hike up the Sulphur Skyline trail to Sulphur Peak, which offered great 360 degree panoramic views of the surrounding mountains.  We were feeling pretty good, so we hiked typically – we absolutely bombed up the mountain, passing many people along the way, and then came down slowly and carefully, being passed by multiple (often the same) people.  It’s sort of our thing at this point.

Wildlife

Two grizzlies playing in the water at Glacier NP

Cow moose eating gravel on the side of the road in Big Sky, MT

Bull elk walking along the road in Jasper

Mountain goat licking salt from rocks on the Icefield Parkway, near Jasper

A herd of bighorn sheep hanging out at Miette Hot Springs, near Jasper

I sure am glad we got a pair of binoculars for this trip.  The past few weeks have been like a safari.  Some of our best sightings have been wildlife on the sides of mountains, across valleys, or otherwise far away.  Unfortunately, our ‘equipment’ doesn’t really allow us to take pictures through our binoculars, so most of our wildlife photography happens when we’re lucky enough to be up close (often at the roadside).  So far we have seen:

Grazing animals

• Bison (herds)
• Elk (bull & cow)
• Moose (bull & cow)
• Bighorn sheep (herds)
• Mule deer (several)
• Pronghorn antelope (2)
• Mountain goat (5+)

Rodents

• Marmot (many)
• Pika (many)
• Chipmunks, squirrels, ground squirrels, Columbian ground squirrels (who even knows)

Birds

• Bald eagle (two)
• Osprey (several)
• California condor (several)

Animals that are scary

• Black bear (5+)
• Grizzly bear (2)
• Wolf (1)

Smaller versions of animals that are scary

• Coyote (1)
• Fox (1)

Animals we ate

• Pigs
• Cows
• Chicken (meat)
• Chicken (eggs)
• Deer

Icefields Parkway

Kristen at the Peyto Lake overlook

Typical view from the Icefields Parkway

Driving past the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Ice Field

The road between Banff and Jasper is the most beautiful road either of us has ever driven.  The drive should take about 4 hours if you don’t stop.  We stopped so much it took us at least 6.

It’s called the Icefields Parkway, and for good reason.  There are constant supplies of glaciers and gorgeous mountain lakes within view from the roadside.  We knew it was going to be pretty nice; we did not know it would be like THIS.  Our Canadian Rockies guidebook sort of underplayed how spectacular the drive would be, and Kristen said afterward she felt she was “underprepared” for the majesty of the place.

Lake O’Hara – the trail to Mordor

Panorama of the Lake O’Hara area, taken at Wilwaxy Pass

The trail to Mordor – looking at the Lake Oesa basin from near Wilwaxy Pass.  Route barely visible.

Kristen on the way out of the Lake Oesa basin

Jeff nearing the Opabin Plateau area

Panorama of the Lake O’Hara area, taken at All Souls

Lake O’Hara is, simply put, the best hiking I have ever done.  It is also easily in Kristen’s all-time top 5 (she has a lot more experience than me).

The lake itself is situated in a glacial basin about 10-15 miles Northwest of Lake Louise, just across the British Columbia border into Yoho National Park.  Access to the lake basin is severely restricted, in order to keep the area as pristine as possible.  A bus runs a few times a day from the parking area near the highway, up the 11km dirt road, to a small and rustic day hut at the base of the lake (named Le Relais, but called Le Creuset by Kristen because she couldn’t remember the proper name).  Bus reservations are taken exactly three months in advance, and fill up within minutes.  You are not allowed to drive your car up the road, and not allowed to ride a mountain bike up the road.  You either take the bus, or you walk (which almost nobody does).

We had not heard about Lake O’Hara when we planned this part of the trip.  Kristen read a few snippets about it the day we arrived in Banff, buried somewhere in our Canadian Rockies guidebook.  The book said it was the best hiking in all of the Canadian Rockies, but good luck getting there.  So of course, we had to do it.  But we didn’t have bus reservations.  Information on the internet was spotty, but we read that it might be possible to get next-day reservations by going to the visitor center in nearby Field, BC at 7:30am the day before you wanted to hike.  So we woke up at 6 on our rainy day in Banff and did the 1 hour drive to Field.  No dice, doesn’t work that way, no spots.  They told us if we showed up at the Lake O’Hara parking lot at 7:30am the day we wanted to hike, we would have a good shot at a standby/cancellation spot on the 8:30am bus.  It was seeming pretty iffy at this point, but we said screw it and woke up at 6am again.  We got to the parking lot at 7:30am as instructed, and we were the sixth group in the standby line!  People had arrived at 6am to secure their spots.  Crap.  We didn’t get a spot on the bus.

It was walk up or go home.  We walked up.

The roughly 6.5 miles and 1000 vertical feet took only a little over 2 hours to cover, and we were feeling pretty good when we arrived at the day hut.  Even better, the area looked spectacular.  We asked for advice on hikes in the area, and the girl working the counter at the day hut told us we had to take the ‘Alpine Circuit’ route.

Apparently the Alpine Club of Canada built a ridiculous trail around the walls of the basin.  Lake O’Hara is walled in maybe 200-250 degrees around by sheer peaks, with various terraced lakes, benches, passes, and hanging valleys above it.  The ‘Alpine Circuit’ begins at one end of the wall, goes straight up (steepest trail I’ve ever been on), stays up, traveling across scree fields on the sheer mountainsides, visits two lake basins on its way around, then finally drops down back to the valley floor most of the way to the other end.  It’s only 12km in total distance, but is tough going.  There is barely a trail in many sections.  However, the views are totally worth it.  The trail is above treeline for 95% of the hike, so your entire field of view is filled with peaks and glaciers all day.

We were so excited to begin, we absolutely bombed up the initial hillside (~1500ft elevation gain over 1 mile, yikes) to get to Wilwaxy Pass, the first major lookout point of the hike.  From there, we traveled to Lake Oesa.  This was our favorite part of the hike.  It felt like walking the trail to Mordor.  A narrow trail on a mountainside, loose rocks, 500ft drops, and giant, imposing layer-cake mountains in all colors, in all directions.  It was the most fantastic place I’ve ever been.  We ate lunch at Lake Oesa, which is the top in a series of terraced lakes and waterfalls that drop down to Lake O’Hara.  From there it was more rock scrambling and non-stop views on the way to the Opabin Plateau (called the O’Pabst Blue Ribbon Plateau by me all day because I couldn’t remember the proper name), a lush bench with many small lakes and a series of trails criss-crossing them.  We spent a bit of time on the plateau, and then made our way up the absolutely terrifying ascent to All Souls lookout point (the high point on the far side of the trail) for the best panorama of the area.  And from there it was finally down back to the day hut.  I was absolutely destroyed by the end of the hike, but Kristen was somehow feeling good.  We caught the bus back down the access road (no reservations required) and returned back to our campsite Banff, exhausted.

We’re pretty glad Lake O’Hara is a ‘best kept secret.’  Almost everyone we met up there had been before, and were fairly serious hiking enthusiasts.  It’s less than an hour away from Banff, yet totally unspoiled.  We will be back – our first discussion after coming out of the area was regarding who we should tell first about the area, and which friends we should bring up there next summer.