By Jon in Alaska
August 1 2010

It's been a week since Jon nearly in Alaska and Former Hollywood Saint) left Maine on their cross country trip over the US and Canada. They continue north through two of Canada's most picturesque parks...

Day 7

So day 7 started in slightly different fashion than the previous few days.  Instead of my iPhone, my alarm was changed to a moustached Park Ranger knocking on the window of the truck.  Apparently it's not allowed to sleep in a park and not in a designated camping ground.  But after we told him of our weary travels, he let us go with a warning and good luck for the rest of the trip.

The morning view from our "camp site"

Good weather and clear skies blessed us as we travelled up through the picturesque Banff National Park and up through to Jasper.  Anyone who has been there before can remember how beautiful this place is. Myself?  I always seem to remember the sheer number of trees!  Anyway, we dodged the endless warnings of potential games of chicken with Elk/Moose/Bear and also the apparent high forest fire warning.  Photos a plenty were taken on the route of the various Glaciers along the road as well as more trees.  Only one down point to the day so far, Delaware had still eluded us (see Yellowstone section).

A typical glacial lake in Banff National Park

As we cleared the parks, the roads became straighter, the scenery more plain, and the interesting photos few.  However, thanks to some miscalculating by Jon, I was left to drive a tricky part of the road as economically as humanly possible (something that is quite tricky for me) as we could run out of fuel before the next stop.  And what of the miscalculator?  He fell asleep as soon as he told me the problem.  Some skilled driving by myself got us to the next stop with plenty to spare and at the change over Jon was left with some tricky roads to handle, such as one road we came across with one slight turn in the space of about 30 miles.  The Romans would have been proud.

Before reaching our rest stop, we entered our second Canadian state (province? territory? whatever...).

In the evening, the entertainment was brought to us in the way of a town called Beaver Lodge.  Anywhere that says it is home to a famous Giant Beaver that is around 20 feet tall is fine by me.  The rest stop was reached in good time in a town called Dawson Creek.  No relation to the old teen TV show, thank God.  Interesting place out in the middle of nowhere but has everything you need from a Walmart to an arena that is housing a Meat Loaf concert in a few days time.  So to a good night sleep in the back of the truck again for me, and then heading off for even more in the middle of nowhere tomorrow.

Distance travelled: 4020 miles.

States visited: 18 - ME, NH, MA, NY, PA, OH, IN, MI, IL, WI, MN, IA, SD, WY, MT, ID, AB, British Columbia (BC).