Day 1 - Calgary to Nelson
Written at 6:45am 0km
After some last minute
packing I double checked my list of things to bring and
headed out on Highway 1A. Everything was in order, I
had all my clothing, money, toothbrush, camera, memory
cards… but wait, I forgot to bring the spare tire!
Oops!, too bad I was already half an hour out of the house by
the time I remembered. Honestly, how likely will I get
a flat tire in 3000kms of the twistiest roads in BC?
Full of
fuel but forgetting the spare tire - Click to enlarge
Written at 8:36am 178km - Paint Pots
There was a place called
Paint Pots just past the Castle Junction off Highway 93.
The scenery was very nice there, with high mountain
peaks surrounding the road. Saw a couple of deer on the
road as well, but didn’t bother to photograph them
because they were sitting in the shadows of some trees.
That $4 cheapo Canada flag was staying on the car
surprisingly. And for breakfast I had the first trail
mix bar out of the box (bought a box full of that for
the trip) Yum!
Video
- Hwy 1 near Banff
Video - Hwy 1 near Castle Junction
Near the Paint Pots -
Click to enlarge
Walked up to the Paint pots
for a look. It was pretty interesting. The ground was
mostly covered by a clay like material that had a
reddish brown color to it. Really sticks to
your hand too, as I found out by touching it and then
tried furiously to rub it off my fingers. I met a
nice old couple while walking up the hill and walked up
alongside them. It was an interpretive trail with
signs along the way describing the paint pot’s story (they were mined for
making paint). One thing that really stood out was how
nice the air smelled in the morning forest, just
inspiring.
One of the "Paint Pots" at the top of the trail
- Click to enlarge
Another "Paint Pot"
- Click to enlarge
The forest smelled very nice! - Click to enlarge
Video: Hwy 93 past Paint Pots
Written at 10:35am Radium Hot Springs 265km
There were some nice twisty
bits after the paint pots. Recommended speed was 60kph
and driving a little faster than that made them quite
entertaining. Stopped by the valley gap just before
Radium for some pictures, what a great view! However,
it was starting to get really hot. The A/C was on, and
¼ tank of gas gone so far. I was hungry as well and
needed to find a place for a bite.
Video: Hwy 93 near Radium going downhill
Mountain pass near Radium
Hot Springs - Click to enlarge
The gap just
outside of Radium Hot Springs
- Click to enlarge
Video: Twisty roads near Radium
Written at 12:21 pm
Cranbrook 412km
The drive from Radium to
Cranbrook was in one word: Boring. It was just mostly
flat straight roads with semi heavy traffic. There were
some nice sandy rock formations near Lake Windermere
however.
Video: Hwy 93 near Lake Windermere
I followed 2 bikes for 50kms
then decided to pass them, a Ford Fusion, and a Civic
all in one go. That turned out a bit more exciting
than I expected. I was up to 150kph by the time I
was behind the Civic. I intended to pull in behind him,
but then he decided to brake a little so I could get
ahead of him instead, so I punched it and squeezed out
in front of him just in time. A couple of bikes were
coming the other way, and another 2 seconds and I
wouldn't be here telling you about the trip.
It was raining heavily and
storming when I was at Cranbrook Burger King. Bought a
cheese burger (they forgot the cheese though!) and a
whopper Junior for lunch. That wasn’t a very good idea
either, I was thirsty as hell for the next 3 hours.
After that I went to a local "wild life viewpoint", not
a whole lot to see there though under the mid day sun
other than some cool cloud formations.
Video: Between Cranbrook and Creston Hwy 93
Cranbrook Wildlife Viewpoint
- Click to enlarge
Written at 2:46pm between Creston and Kooteney Bay 560km
I brought along some ear plugs and
ear plug headphones for use when I sleep at the
hostels. I heard that’s a good idea because of all the
snoring that goes on. Just for fun I put on the ear plugs
in the car to block out the road noise. It worked very
well. The MINI isn’t a very quiet car especially when
you cruise at higher speeds, so if you get tired of
hearing the engine hum and the tire drone you can give
the ear plugs a shot too.
Video: Hwy 3A north past Creston
I stopped at a little harbor
by the Kooteney Lake for some pictures. That was an
extremely bad idea. There were so many mosquitoes
around, the moment I got off the car at least 10 of them
surrounded me and started to seek out their favorite
spot on my arms, face, back of the ear etc to grab their
lunch! I hastily took some pictures, and for the first
time in my life, fled from mosquitoes. I opened up the
car door and the mosquitoes with their heat sensing
abilities thought it was a good idea to head in there
with me. About 20 of them went inside the car and I was
considering just abandoning the car there and run for
it. But of course, I couldn’t. Instead I rolled down
the windows of the MINI and just floored it. Some of
the mosquitoes got blown away by the wind, but most of them managed
to secure themselves on the back of the seats, or on the
ceiling, and just generally staying put even with the
wind
howling at 100km/h. I stopped at a rest stop and tried
to get rid of them by slapping and killing as many as I
could. Unfortunately the place I stopped at had trees
on the side and more of them actually ended up inside
the car, yikes! I turned the fan on full blast and with
windows down, drove for a couple more kms and found a
place to stop without trees. I managed to kill every
single one of those little blood suckers there, phew!
Mosquito Bay (real name forgotten)
- Click to enlarge
About the road itself, this
road along Kooteney Bay was definitely one of the
best twisties out there in BC. It was basically
70km of non stop twisty road along the lake, many of
them were banked corners. Traffic was relatively light,
however it didn't take much effort to catch up to
slower campers and RVs or even those Harleys cruisers.
For anyone who has driven in Calgary, its like Old Banff
Coach road, except its 70km long and the scenery is way
nicer. Most corners there are listed as 60km/h or so,
and since they’re mostly blind corners, doing 90km/h
provides plenty of excitement, although not a whole lot
of G forces. The weather was terrific, but a little bit
on the hot side at about 28C.
Video: Kooteney Bay twisties
Highway 3A beside
Kooteney Lake - Click to enlarge
Written at 3:29pm by Kooteney Lake 585km
Still driving on Highway 3A
towards Kooteney Bay. The mosquitoes were gone now, but
I wasn’t having as much fun as I wanted due to traffic.
Been trying to pull over or slowing down so I could have
some clear bits of road in front of me, but it takes
almost no time at all to catch up to the slow RVs towing
their Jeeps.
On a side note, there were
so many of these private “Art Galleries” on the side of
the road along the lake shore. Do artists grow out of
the lake or something? In fact there were so many of
these “Art galleries” that an icecream shop at Kooteney
Bay had a sign that said “Not an Art Gallery”, lol.
Written at 7:44pm Nelson 640km
At Kooteney Bay I waited 30
minutes for a ferry ride across the lake. The ferry
rides in interior BC were all free (I think) and if
you’re not in a hurry, they are more fun than driving on
Highway 1 (trans Canada). It is a good way to relax and
enjoy the beautiful BC landscapes instead of being bored
out of your mind
driving like a zombie.
Video: Kooteney Bay Ferry
MINI on the ferry
- Click to enlarge
Everyone relaxing on the ferry deck - Click to enlarge
The other ferry crossing the lake
- Click to enlarge
I was stuck behind a SUV to
Nelson. Fueled up at an ESSO in Nelson, $47! Ouch.
Fuel was by far the most expensive part of this trip.
The sales clerk guy at ESSO told me there was a
fireworks display down at the river at 10pm, awesome!
After fueling up I managed to get really lost in a town
with like 10 streets total. It doesn’t help that there
were no street signs telling you which street you’re ON.
It turned out that the hostel was right across the
street from ESSO, duh!
Front door of the "Dancing Bear
Inn" hostel -
Click to enlarge
The receptionist woman in
the hostel was very nice. She correctly guessed my name
(with help from her reservation list) $23 a night,
sounds pretty good to me! The reception area and the
common area were clean and nicely furnished. The room I
got to sleep in had 3 bunk style beds for a total of 6
people. It was pretty dark in the room, and when I went
inside a guy sleeping on one of the bed woke up and
asked me for the time (5:18pm). After checking the room
and put the linen on the bed, I went down by the river
side and had a chicken sub, iced tea and some chips.
Nelson was a pretty neat
town, with some old style buildings and flower lined
streets. It really has "Character", I loved it.
Nelson Court House
- Click to enlarge
I went out for a little walk
along the river. A guy was feeding pigeons on a park
bench. Some of the pigeons actually jump onto the guy’s
hand to eat. Looked like fun! I asked the man if I
could take pictures of him, and he said sure, as long as
I would send him the pictures on email. His name was
Jean and he was from 2 hours away in BC. After I
chatted with him a bit and took some pictures, a little
kid and his mom came out of their car nearby. The kid
started running after the pigeons yelling “Ducky!
Ducky!” and when he got close enough to the pigeons,
started spitting on them. Yeah, weird? His mom told
him to stop, but I don’t think he took in a word.
Jean feeding pigeons and letting
them fly onto his hand
- Click to enlarge
Pigeons flying in formation over the river - Click to
enlarge
The "Pigeon spitter" kid
- Click to enlarge
As there were still hours
to go before the fireworks so I went back to the hostel
for a shower. The shower was very clean, thank god. I
had been worried that I would have to go to some slimy
dirty place and catch some diseases, but not at this
hostel, at least!
Clean showers at Dancing Bear Inn
- Click to enlarge
After that I drove out to
downtown and took some pictures, then down to the river
side and took a 30 minute nap in the car. There were
some pretty lame music playing by the park side, and a
lot of teenagers were dancing around the band having a
good time. I got sick of that pretty quick and went to
find a place to sit. I found a park bench with a pretty
good view of the Nelson Bridge.
Sunset over the Nelson Bridge
- Click to enlarge
The sunset gave me something
to do (take pictures) and the wait for fireworks was
punctuated by mother nature lighting up the sky every couple
minutes. I actually managed to capture a couple of
those lightning streaks on camera.
Lightning over the
Nelson Bridge and River - Click to enlarge
The wait was pretty dull,
the music drummed on and on and finally at 10pm (after
waiting for 1.5 hours) the fireworks started. I
couldn’t have picked a worse place to sit; the fireworks
were right behind me. So I hastily grabbed my stuff and
tried to take some pictures of the fireworks. Since
this was in a valley, every bang from the fireworks
echoed off the mountain walls, giving a very impressive
sound effect. I tried a few different settings on the camera
so I could expose the pictures correctly, but it turned
out photographing fireworks isn’t the easiest thing to
do if you’ve never done it before.
Fireworks over Nelson, BC
- Click to enlarge
More fireworks
- Click to enlarge
Mid way through the 15
minute show the sky opened up the taps and started to
rain. There were some strange long pauses in the
fireworks show and people kept thinking it was over
before it really was, and when they started to leave
there were be more fireworks. Overall I thought the
show was great, and Nelson was the perfect location to
see beautiful fireworks. Right when the fireworks ended
the rain came pouring down and everyone were soaked.
Thank god my camera didn’t die on me, it got really wet
however, and most of the pictures I took were ruined by
rain drops on the lens.
Video: Nelson Fireworks
Traffic was horrible since
so many people tried to leave at once, all the
pedestrians and the rain made it a little dangerous as
well. I got back at the hostel by about 11pm and tried
to sleep. Before long I was woken up by the loud party
in the bar across the street at around 2am. A couple of
guys came into the room at 2:50am and proceeded to fall
asleep at once. Lucky them! The one guy sleeping on
the top bunk of my bed started to snore extremely
loudly. I and least 2 other guys in the room were waken
up by it. In goes my ear plugs, but even that
didn't
block out the noise. So I put on the ear plug
headphones and turned up the volume. That did the trick
so at least I could relax, but with the volume turned up
it wasn’t possible to really fall asleep again.
Video: Rain storm after the fireworks
Statistics for today:
Pictures taken - 120
Money spent - $47 on fuel, $23 on hostel, $11.50 for
food
Onto Day 2!
08/07/06
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