Deadlines and Border

There is nothing like sitting at a distillery sampling liquor, looking at mountains and writing a blog, 10/10 I'd recommend, anyway here is out last week exploring North America!. 

September 13^th – Into Kootenay National Park

We woke up in the middle of nowhere far from any “real” campsite down a trail that the van probably shouldn’t have driven down, but hey the van was fixed, right?  After posting our blog the previous day we thought it best to hit the road, we had a deadline to meet, to cross the US border on September 15^th.  This date is important to us as it was the day, we told the Government of BC we would be leaving and the first day that our travel insurance starts[1].

To ensure we met this deadline we left Nelson shortly after posting the blog, but only after checking out the electric tram ride through the waterfront.  We drove near the entrance of Kootenay National Park, however we were struggling finding somewhere to sleep, but we saw a quasi camping spot looking location down a dirt road off a logging road and thought, this could work.  Don’t worry, Paul did walk the “road” first before attempting to drive down it.

We entered Kootenay National Park excited for the possible hikes and views, but unfortunately the smoke was still very dense.  We decided to prioritize hikes that were not dependent on the views, specifically Paint Pots and Marble Canyon.

The first stop was Paint Pots which was an awesome short hike to these humongous puddles (or tiny lakes) that due to their mineral contents and natural dyes in the mud have these beautiful colours.  Rupert surprisingly loved this hike especially jumping into the mud, which dyed his fur yellow… A quick dip in the glacier creek running nearby taught him a lesson, that lesson being he loves mud but still doesn’t like water. Maybe one day he will learn, but you can’t really teach an old dog new tricks (trust us, we’ve tried).

We then, noticing we were only 30 kilometers from Banff, and knowing we had a gift card for The Keg [Thanks Mom] drove into the community.  Our first stop was Cave and Basin as we had never been to it before and we have always been curious about it.  It was fine, glad we went but we wouldn’t go again as it was more like a museum than a natural wonder (even though the cave is very beautiful).

The Keg was great, bit expensive but we had a gift card.  After eating appetizers and a big dinner we were definitely waddling back to the vehicle, meaning we had to do one more hike to work off our meals.

We drove to the trailhead of the Marble Canyon; we had saw on the map that Marble Canyon Campground was across the road, so figured we would spend the night there. However, the campground closed for the season on September 11, 2022 and we had read that we could camp at the Marble Canyon hike parking lot, even though we weren’t really supposed to.    We set up our camp, hiked through Marble Canyon then relaxed in bed just as a huge rain and thunderstorm hit the area.

September 14^th – Finding Red Chairs

One of our favourite things to do in Canadian National Parks is finding the Red Parks Canada Chairs located at key viewpoints.  One was at Marble Canyon which we had seen the night before, a second was at Simpson River.  Thankfully due to the rain the mountains were finally viewable and there was even a tiny chair for children (or Rupert!).

The next chairs were overlooking Radium Hot Springs, and even though the trail map was a bit confusing, we found them pretty quickly.

By the time we found the last set of chairs the hot springs across the road had opened, so we obviously needed to check them out.  They were fine, like a large warm swimming pool, and the change rooms provided us the opportunity to have a shower.

There was one last hot spring we wanted to visit, Lussier Hot Springs in White Swan Provincial Park, so after getting our fill at Radium we jumped back in the van and drove.  As we passed the trailhead to Lussier we noticed one thing, it was packed with vehicles, so we decided to get a camping spot for the night and head to the hot springs in the morning.

 

September 15^th – Back to the USA

We woke up both excited and sad to be leaving Canada.  We knew there was so much more we could see and do in the Kootenays but we had our deadline.  We drove to Lussier for 8:30am and had the hot springs almost to ourselves.  Definitely in our top 3 hot springs, but I could see this one becoming one of our least favourites if it was full of people, the pools were just very small, great for 12 or so people, bad for 20 or more.

We left the springs by noon and headed into Cranbrook to spend all our PC points for non-meat products and try to find a new camp stove.  The regulator of our camp stove stopped working.  We do have theories why but needed a new stove, we store it vertically rather than horizontally, so we are going to store the stove differently to see if it lasts longer than a few months of daily use.

Purchasing a camp stove has been tricky in the past when the last one broke as the van is designed to hold a very specific size of camp stove, common ones, like a Coleman or Woods are too big.  This potential trip altering issue ended up not being an issue as after a bit of research Kendra learned that the right sized camp stove was at Sport Check of all places; crisis avoided.

After rereading everything we needed to do before crossing the border, and getting out everything they may want to see (specifically Rupert’s specialty dog food), we drove up to the border guard.

Entering the US is one of the most difficult borders for most doing the Pan-American highway, but we knew, as Canadians, it would be easier for us due to various agreements (recognition of car insurance, licenses, 6 months visa free travel, etc.), but we were traveling for 3 months.

Paul was driving and the border guard asked for our passports, asked where we were going (Paul said Mexico after 3 months of traveling in the United States). Then the border guard asked for our proof of vaccination. Kendra showed her proof saved from their trip to Spain in March, but Paul did not have his saved on his phone. We didn’t need the proof to enter Alaska, so he had just assumed you didn’t need it to enter the United States.  The border guard asked us to pull to the side, kept our passports and said once Paul finds it, we can get the passports back.  He turned his phone and mobile data on (and therefore had to pay roaming charges 😐) and grabbed the proof.  Paul walked back to the border, showed the proof and a different border guard handed our passports back and with a kind smile said enjoy your trip.

THAT WAS IT!!! It felt like we smuggled the dog in as they didn’t ask for any paperwork for him (we had his vaccination status ready to go plus his dog food prescription).  They didn’t ask our route, or what food we had.  They didn’t even ask us if we had anything to declare.  We didn’t as we knew we were following all the rules, but seriously that was it. If you’re looking for a quick, relatively easy, and (other than psychological stress you place upon yourself) relatively painless border crossing check out Roosville.

We drove to the first large city, Kalispell Montana, on the map to go to Costco for cheap gas and Best Buy for a pre-paid Sim Card.  NOTE: Kendra and I have a new phone number for the next 3 months, let us know if you want it 😊).

We then decided to return to Whitefish, a cute ski town just north of Kalispell to camp so we could explore the area the next day.

 

September 16^th – Just an all around Perfect Day

When we were working, we had a pretty good idea if we would be having a good day or a bad day or uneventful day the second we woke up.  During this adventure we have no idea what sort of day we will have until we have it, we may meet a cool person, see an amazing site, or have an interesting or funny thing happen to us.  Today we woke up unaware that we were going to have a perfect day.

We went to downtown Whitefish which is full of dog friendly coffeeshops and restaurants overlooking a ski hill. It was great to spend the morning exploring the community and people watching.  As we explored, we saw a poster for a Songwriters Music Festival that was occurring this week in Whitefish.  There were musical performances occurring between 8 venues starting at 10am until 10 pm AND tickets were only $20!!  Well, our afternoon and evening turned into walking from venue to venue watching live music, drinking some local beer and cider and eating all the meat from a local BBQ place.

The time flew by.  The music was awesome, the artists were so entertaining and so talented.  It even caused us to break the #1 rules of driving the Pan-America, do not drive at night.  Thankfully everything worked out!

 

September 17^th – A day of camping

The campgrounds around the Whitefish area were both full and expensive, and for those reading who know us, we can be frugal sometimes.  It was a weekend and the weather was warm so lots of Montana locals had flocked to get one more weekend of camping in.  The state park, which would cost $30 usd a night, had no room for us.  We thought to see if we could stay at an RV park, but were surprised to hear they were also full and would cost $80 usd a night; FOR CAMPING (with water and electric hook ups- which we have no use for)!!!!  Hotels in the area were equally expensive, costing $270 usd a night, but the night before we had learned of a free campground 30 minutes north of Whitefish so we spent the night at Upper Stillwater Campground.  Knowing that it may be difficult to find camping today we decided to have a day of relaxing and vegging.  It was so needed after doing so much exploring and visiting over the last few weeks.

 

September 18^th – Heading to Glacier National Park

The reason we decided to enter the United States through Montana was to see Glacier National Park.  We had been told that it can be quite busy so wanted to enter it on Monday morning, we spent today doing laundry, finding a shower and finding a campsite near the entrance to the park so we could do the highly rated Going to the Sun road without have to compete with so many others. 

After doing laundry and failing to find a shower, we decided to stop at a local distillery in Coram, MT. Glacier distilling was open when we drove by, and with a dog friendly patio we had to stop in. Needless to say we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and the cool fall weather and they had free wifi to post this blog!

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[1] Typically, if you leave the province for more than 6 months you lose your residence and by extension your provincial health insurance, which is the foundation for any travel insurance you purchase.  When talking to our travel insurance provider we were made aware that these 6 months can be extended if you have lived in the province for over 5 years, have no left for longer than 3 months.  We met these criteria so were able to extend, but we had to give a date, the date we choose was September 15^th.