You know how your town has a farmer’s market twice a month, in the summer? Vancouver has a farmer’s market which has metastasized and taken over an entire island, called Granville Island. They have all kinds of stores, from boutiques that sell “fun” sweatshirts to shoe stores painted in fanciful colors to carts selling every food that could conceivably be described as a pie.
On the edge of Granville Island there is a shack called Go Fish that sells fish and chips, using fish that they basically caught five minutes ago. I ordered batter-fried salmon and chips, and it was insane delicious. Zach had wandered off to get something for lunch that didn’t come from the ocean, and when he came back he wanted to try one bite. “No,” I said. It was already all gone. I did not regret this.
Granville was also hosting a wooden boat festival, which ruled pretty hard. It really made us want to built a wooden boat and sail the seas with it. Once they have wireless internet for boats on the ocean, we will definitely do this.
Fellow Americans: you may think you love donuts, but you do not love donuts. You like, enjoy, and occasionally consume donuts. Canadians LOVE donuts. They have Tim Horton’s the way Americans have Subways. I mean they are EVERYWHERE. And when you walk into that Tim Horton’s, you will wait in a line, because at least half a dozen Canadians got there before you. Because they LOVE donuts. And when they get those donuts, they might even sit down and eat them off a plate, instead of gulping them down while driving away, like an American. Really something to behold.
So after a couple stops at various Tim Horton’s, we made it into Banff. Banff is different from American national parks. It’s simultaneously more developed, resort-style, and more desolate and creepy feeling than an American national park. It’s hard to describe but it gave me a weird feeling.
The Trans-Canada highway from Calgary to Vancouver goes right through Banff, so when you pull up to the park entrance, you have to explain where you’re going so they can charge you accordingly. The unbelievably French Canadian working the booth was not exactly helpful. When we admitted we weren’t sure where we were headed for within the park, she visibly drew back in alarm. We laughed about that one for awhile. If French-Canadian people are so easily taken aback it’s no wonder they don’t control any territory larger than Quebec.
(Zach also claims that there was a funny campsite manager who I made fun of for being excessively Canadian, but I don’t recollect her. Mock them and leave them, that’s my style.)
The general feel of the park was very different from Glacier or Devil’s Tower. It was less nature-y/outdoorsy/hiker-y, and more Family Vacation Destination. Where American national parks attract a very specific type of vacationer (a nerdy one), Banff seems to draw people who would love to visit Disney World except their country doesn’t have one. Yet at the same time, the woods are very tall and quiet and dark and unnerving. Kind of like Jeff Goldblum.
We followed a paved path along a river which was very pretty. It ends at a waterfall, and when you reach the lower falls, you can walk through a cave-tunnel and come out basically under the falls. It’s very cool, especially considering that the little spot is (mostly) non-man-made.
After eating a delicious camping dinner (a couple tins of beef stew) we retired for the night. It was already getting chilly, but we had no idea what we were in for. Internet, it was COLD in Banff that night. Like, ICE ICE BABY TOO COLD (TOO COLD).
We both woke up multiple times to groan and shiver and be cold. I don’t think I’ve ever locked up in a fetal position so tight and small, trying to stay warm. I was circled up so close I probably looked like a dog sleeping on too-small rug.
We had planned on staying two nights, but I couldn’t take any more punishment like that. The next morning we decided to make like Al-Qaeda and blow the place.
For our second day at Glacier, Zach and I wanted to take a big old hike. We wanted to take a one-way loop hike, since nothing is less interesting than turning around at a halfway point and taking the same walk again, only more sore and tired this time.
This meant taking the Highline Trail. It starts at Logan Pass and ends at The Loop, which is 12 miles in all. NBD.
So after dragging ourselves out of the tent once it got too hot to remain under the sleeping bag and brewing some Crabbiness Reduction Potion (aka Jayne’s tea) we drove up to Logan Pass.
The little synopsis in the newspaper they hand you whenever you drive into any National Park said that the hike would take 7-8 hours. Once we got to Logan Pass we realized that the last shuttle to bring us back to our car would be leaving in less than 8 hours. I am proud that this only made me fret incessantly, rather than cancel the entire hike.
The National Parks are interesting in the way they warn you of danger, i.e. that they just assume you’re not going to be an idiot. There are no fences around the Grand Canyon, and this Highline Trail had no guardrails to keep you from careening down the alpine meadows. There was a single sign reminding you to bring your own water, but that’s it. For many parts of this hike you walk a narrow path along a rock face, often crossing streams or loose rocks. It’s pretty rad.
The first leg is uphill, leading up to a little plain with boulders to sit on and summer snow to gawk at. It’s a good place to eat lunch and let the fat squirrels crawl over your boots and beg for scraps.
Wild animals begging for food drives me nuts because it is living proof of how dumb people are. They see a cute/majestic/noble wild animal, they feel a natural yearning to connect somehow with that animal, and so they…give it a treat. Just like tossing Greenies to Fido back home. Idiotic.
The middle part of the hike was truly amazing. I’m not exactly John Muir so I’ll let Zach’s photos show you how beautiful and exhilarating it was.
The last three miles are all downhill. “Great,” you think. “Going down, easy!” No. Going steeply downhill for three miles just basically destroys your knees and ankles. When I realized this I almost started crying. It was only the knowledge that Zach is (probably) not physically capable of carrying me down a mountain that kept me from just giving up right there.
Feeling extremely weary, we did make it down to shuttle in plenty of time (less than 6 hours). When I saw that bus I could have kissed the driver.
We crowded aboard only to see that it was crammed to the gills with old people seeing the park in air-conditioned style. The driver tried to tell Zach there was no room for him, but when he sat on my lap the driver made no objections.
When we got back to Logan Pass I waddled as fast as I could up to the visitor center, intent on buying about a gallon of Gatorade. Guess again, friends – the visitor center does not sell an ounce of liquid. I settled for drinking as much water as I physically could from the drinking fountain. As I staggered back to the car my entire abdomen sloshed ‘glorp glorp.’
Although the car was in sight, one physical challenge remained – a big horn sheep was patrolling the parking lot like a straight up player. I don’t know if he was looking for ladies or hoping to lap up some antifreeze but he definitely had that wicked devil-eyes thing going on that goats have.
Then we drove back to camp and I complained about being sore all the way to Canada.
If you look carefully, it almost looks like several human faces, carved right into the mountain! Of course, we now know that it’s a trick of light and shadow, but still, the illusion is quite convincing, isn’t it?
Mount Rushmore was the national park with the least “national park”-type feel. For instance, fewer Canadians. Also, a perfectly smooth, paved path with several even steps was listed as a “strenuous” hike. Also, the sheer quantity of ice cream.
Probably 75% of the people I saw at the monument and the lodge were eating ice cream. The town down below (Keystone, SD) is a town built on ice cream advertisements. While we walked around the monument, we heard a bratty little child in front of us shriek at his caregiver for ice cream, upwards of ten times, in two languages. She did NOT tan his backside for this, which I thought was an interesting parenting choice.
I was amazed to see how many children got their own dish of ice cream, since one serving of ice cream was literally about 3/4 of a pint. Zach and I split one. As a childless person, I like to judge other people’s parenting. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel strong.
In the evenings, they run a little patriotic film about the accomplishments of the four presidents along with a lighting ceremony. Afterward they invited current and retired military people down to the stage to be thanked. It was all quite stirring and patriotic.
As soon as the program finished, everyone turned around to leave. Except for one kid who instead charfed up a big pile of puke at the top of the stairs. Probably had too much ice cream.
I’m no Paris Hilton but camping was definitely not anything my family did. Zach comes to this project with lots of family wisdom on how to choose the best campsite and how to operate a camp shower, and I basically contribute the ability to say when I am hungry and complain about bugs.
So I’ve been learning a lot of new things on this trip. One thing that I’ve learned is that national parks are full of nerrrrrrds.
At our campground, I saw one guy sitting outside his wagon with a box next to him proudly labeled “Books for X-Country Trip.” Now don’t get me wrong, I brought books to read on the trip too. But the difference between me and this guy was that I did not lovingly hand select which vintage paperbacks I would bring with me, while chuckling along to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on NPR and sipping on Smuggington Grove’s Eco-Sustainable Chardonnay. I have a very strong feeling that this guy did.
There was an astronomy program listed for that evening. We didn’t exactly have any nightclub openings to hit up so off to stargaze we went. The skies in the Badlands are incredibly dark so you can really see an astonishing number of stars. The Milky Way is huge and bright and Jupiter is basically enormous.
I even learned some new facts about stars, because there were no less than three astronomers present to share their thoughts on stars. I hoped there would be a question and answer period because I wanted to ask them what exactly the applied purpose of astronomy is in 2009. Apparently there are people who still learn lots of stuff about constellations past the age of 10, who knew?
They had some fancy-pants telescopes set up for us, but since the amphitheater was near a road, plenty of people kept driving by with headlights or walking with flashlights. Obviously, light can undo your night vision, forcing you to not look at stars for a little bit while your eyes readjust.
Eventually the guy with the biggest telescope reached his breaking point and he walked down to the road and yelled, “NO WHITE LIGHT! WHITE LIGHT BAD! WE are TRYING to DO ASTRONOMY!”
He said this last not unlike a person would say “I am TRYING to SAVE THIS CHILD’S LIFE!” or “I am TRYING to DISABLE THIS BOMB!”
The number one tip on Camping 101 guides is to start slow: for your first time, don’t take off for weeks at a time on an overly ambitious trip. This is exactly what we’re doing. Five weeks, from Iowa up to Banff down to Santa Fe, stopping in pretty much every national park along the way.
We’re making this trip right now because we are both technically unemployed. My job at [REDACTED] doesn’t start until January and Z quit his job so that we can travel and have Kung Fu adventures until then.
Right now we are trying to get packed up so we can leave in the morning. The main obstacle to getting properly packed for me is not knowing what the hell I’m doing. My mental conception of outdoor activity basically begins and ends with the North Face display inside Scheel’s.
If you’re not a person of computers, send me your meatspace address and I’ll send you a postcard. Otherwise, this website is the exclusive authorized source of information about Zach and Jayne’s whereabouts: accept no imitations.
Who knew the space program could be revitalized so easily??
We flew into Oakland and stayed at some jankety hotel we Hotwired. They were hosting a reunion for guys who supported the Apollo 11 mission. At least that’s what I gathered, since I did not see Buzz Aldrin or anything. I would assume he gets put up in a place that at least has an omelette bar.
As it was the day before the bar exam, I was fretting about everything. When Zach took this I was using my iPhone to double-check information on my flashcards. Now any time “all Ds must agree” pops up in my search history I have to repress a shudder.