Big Road

Well,
  8 hours to Riverdale and I can still feel my butt. Saw the world's biggest Buffalo in Jamestown. It's been many years since I've visited Frontier Village (as expected, nothing's changed).














Watched a 9-man high school football game ("we" won):

Wow 12 hours today. Which isn't a problem unless the last few hours are through unfamilar mountain roads... oh yeah rainy, drizzley, wet mountain roads.

But before that here's a snap from Teddy Rosevelt National Park's visitor center

Day 3 and it's still raining.  My uncle Rod tells me Helena get a total of 12 inches on precipitation for a year... well , turns out I've been witness to 1 inch of it (joy). But we still managed to walk around Mt. Helena a bit that evening (in the dizzle). And I took in a quick car-tour of Helena in the morning (still in the drizzle).



Rod & Carol recommended I stop off at the McKnight Pass lookout (I think that was the name). We were hoping the rain would let up and the skies would part. But instead I drove up into a cloud .. but wait ! there's more ... it was still raining, and there was some kind of run/bike event going up/down the pass so us drivers also had to look for runners on the shoulder (we all stuck to the left lane). So let's just say I decided not to stop (wasn't much a view anyways).

Things dryed up , or rather stopped raining around the Idaho border. Boy , you cross the border and you take a serious series of winding decending curves on semi-moist roads. I finally found out how/when to use engine-braking with my auto/manual transmission, and anticipating which way the road will curve on the Sat Nav really helps (note to BMW, a topographic overlay on the GPS display would be nice). Also played a little follow-the-leader with a Black M3 till we ran into road construction that constricted the road to one lane :-(


Spokane:
 Checked into the first of a long line of Holiday Inns ... this one is sitting on a big "rock" which puts it above everything else around (nice views from the rooms). Decided to try a non-fast food outlet for dinner. Ended up a mere two blocks from the hotel at the Clinkerdagger . Nice place, they had a patio overlooking the Spokane River, but they "close up" the dam for that particular section of the river (there's an island there and all/most of the flow is directed on the far side), so it was inside for me.  I'll have to go back over there tomorrow morning for some pictures. Oh, Helena pics are on the way, this hotel's internet connection is too pokey for uploading pictures, I'll cross my fingers in Seattle.














Off to Seattle tomorrow (a mere 4 hours), I'll be picking up Bob "somewhere in Seattle" ....

Met Bob at the hotel.
Had crab cakes on a pier
Walked the Pike's Market
Rode the monorail
Ascended the Space Needle














Then we went off to Maple Country...

We got to Vancouver sooner than I thought, so we had time in the afternoon we arrived to do a little wandering.  We ended up at Canada Place which is their convention center/imax theatre/lookout point area. We also caught a glimpse of our destination for tomorrow, Stanley Park...

The Park
We walked to a bike rental shop and rented "city bikes" for our trip around Stanley Park. It turned into a game of "beat the tour bus" as we went from place to place, always greeted by the same darn tour bus. Since the seawall area by the Lions Gate Bridge was closed (due to some storm damage repairs), we had to take a detour that involved the use of some very low gears on these bikes. Of course all that extra altitude was burned off on the way back down to the seawall, it involved keeping pace with car going at least 25 mph and all I was thinking was "if I hit some bad road and lose it , how the hell am I going to be able to drive the rest of this trip?"

No pics today. Took off at 5am from Vancouver to Calgary (11ish hour trip). Bob snapped many shots of the mountains and the weather behaved itself.
A few dozen exotic sports cars zoomed by us heading west:

"Did" Banff in a day today. There's way too much to see in a day, so we hit some of the highlights: Lake Louise , Moraine Lake and the Banff townsite. Unfourtunatley, the rain has followed us, it was sprinkling on the 2 hour trip from Calgary,  was upgraded to full-on Raining. But wait, there's more ... at 6000+ ft at Moraine Lake , it decided to snow for us (how nice).


We started at the Fairmont hotel over on the right there. Bob and I hiked up to this lookout point (it looked like a much shorter hike on the map).




























Moraine Lake is in the cloud back there. But the snow really started flying, so we took off for Banff and hoped the weather was better.

<-- We came down the mountain for some preseason Hockey, Calgary Flames vs. Vancouver Canucks ( oh yeah, Vancouver won 3-2)

Calgary Skyline from the Saddledome -->

Longish run to Regina, no pics, here's an "artist's" rendition:

Looking out the front windshield

And if you look out the side window...

Copy and paste of the Regina trip it seems

New view out the side of the window...

















We'll be returning to the States tomorrow, we'll need to hit a Tim Horton's soon

After crossing Ontario (which is a rather nice looking drive), we drove into Thunder Bay and made a right (note to the NavTech folks , the roads have changed up there).  The drive to the border took longer than I thought, but we eventually got to the "Bridge to the USA" as the road-sign said.

As expected in the middle of the day on a Monday , the crossing wasn't very busy , so I guess I shouldn't be too suprised that we were pulled to the side for a nice chat and a 20 minute delay while they checked out exactly how much stuff you can put in my trunk. Because , you know two white, 30-something  computer programmers from the state you're crossing into raises all sorts of red flags. Actually , I think the clincher was when asked if we bought anything in Canada, we answered "4 t-shirts" (Me) and "some fridge magnets" (Bob), then it was "you only bought 4 t-shirts and magnets while in Canada for 6 days?".  So the special black gloves were donned, and car keys asked for...

Pulled into Grand Marais , under the cover of clouds of course. We were to eat at the Crooked Spoon  (where Bob says Kangaroo is served), but of course we've had such smashing luck , that we found a sign saying they were closing early (4:30p) THE ONE DAY we were there. So it was pizza at Sven & Ole's  instead.

We woke at the crack of dawn hoping for some sunrise Photos over the lake...













Let's just say we were once again well protected from getting a sunburn.

We ate breakfast at World Best Donuts , I had the season's last maple long-john (yay!)

"what? you've lived in Minnesota for over 25 years and you've never drove the North Shore" ... "nope , Two Harbors for a hockey tournament is as far as I got" .... No more ! I have now driven down the North Shore with extra-special Fall Colors. What they don't tell you  , the majority of the "fall colors" in a forest of Evergreens and Birch is green and yellow...

Up the Gunflint
We decided to drive up the Gunflint trail a ways and check out a few "lookout" points. What I didn't expect was driving through 30-foot visibility fog for 30+ miles (Grand Marais was clear so we had no warning). After some uphill hiking:













We're glad the fog at least burned off

The Falls
We proceeded down the shore and stopped at Goosebury Falls . With the cloud cover we were able to get decent photos of the falls with slow shutter speeds to add that "fuzzy flowing water" effect. Of course those same helpful clouds did the other thing they do well, and let loose the rain when we were at the halfway point of the trail (our camera bags  have built-in rain covers, they've been well used this trip).

We enjoyed much natural irrigation while driving into Duluth. Considering this was one of the shortest drives in the trip I was a bit suprised on how thrashed we were (then I remembered all the hiking). So we plopped down at the hotel's local sports bar for dinner...

And decided for another attempt at sunrise again .... and we saw THE SUN ... "arhhhh it burns us !!" So we made our way the lakeshore and poked around  a bit:


















After a breakfast with way too many "house potatos" , we made our final dash to the cities... and I liberated about 3 pounds of bugs from the front end of my car (poor car)