After a very cold morning in Banff, we decided to cut our losses and head toward Vancouver. It was painful to let the Canadians have that $19.60 we paid for a second day that we didn’t use.
At breakfast, we looked at the map and decided we should try to make it at least to Kamloops, British Columbia. We drove through Banff and a few other Canadian national parks (including their take on Glacier). Canadians seem fine having a big highway system running through their national parks.
The drive to Kamloops was scenic. It was mostly hills/mountains with trees on them but every once in a while you would descend in to a valley or a town. It seemed most of the towns existed because of logging. The place (at least along the highway) didn’t appear to be stripped to their credit. There were plenty of signs denoting when the forest was harvested and their replanting plans. Nature was also doing its part to get rid of trees too. Off to the south of Salmon Arm (a town which evoked all sorts of imagery in Jayne and I’s heads) there was a wildfire which made the sky orange and the air smell even more like burnt wood. Many of the other towns smelled like wood that was freshly sawed. Also on one of our descents we saw several huge bald eagle nests with the eagles just chilling in them, all swelling with majesty.
We played the Kamloops hotel scene by ear as well. One had the word “Thrift” in the name so I took the bait. They were sporting wireless internet (the router was sitting on top of the check in counter next to where I signed the receipt) and were touting a free contintental breakfast. We found out the next morning that that meant Leon at the front desk stopped by IGA on his way to work and picked up a packet of muffins and plugged the hot pot of water in.
We actually arrived in to Kamloops at the dinner hour so why not check out the nightlife? As guilty white kids who may or may not have listened to NPR and may or may not have watched Rick Steves on PBS, we wanted to get something you can’t get in Iowa. We wanted to do as the Romans do. Then we tried to think of just what the hell Canadians do for dinner that is different/better than Iowans. All we could suggest was throwing some bacon on it. That’s how they did their caesar salad.
We were craving our two usuals: pasta or Mexican. We didn’t want to create some sort of NAFTA vortex so we checked out the pasta scene. A restaurant I had been seeing in Chili’s-esque scenarios was a place called East Side Mario’s. After the required online Viewing Of The Menu for Jayne, we went to Kamloops’ mall. East Side Mario’s was interesting. Not only was it an Italian place in Canada but it set a scene much like Olive Garden does. Only instead of pretending you are in Tuscany, they pretend you are in the back alley of Little Italy in New York City. Yep, Canadians doing Italian American-style. It looked like the set for the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (bossanova?).
The food was as expected and we took our leftovers with us to see what else we could get in to. We drove toward the river and I tried looking for a parking space near the park. I was struggling and at first we blamed it on the arena next to the park. The only available spaces were reserved for specific people who had very hockey-sounding names during hockey season. Since it’s Canada, we couldn’t determine if it was hockey season or not. I recalled seeing hockey-related humor on billboards and watched a kid pick up his skates from a SportChek so I played it safe on the parking spot. Wouldn’t want to get five minutes for disrespecting the game?
The actual cause of the parking shortage was more unexpected and hilarious than hockey in August.
Jayne and I have been listening to my music collection on shuffle during our long drives and one downside is my large Johnny Cash collection. I respect his music enough to have it on my player, but don’t know it well enough to whittle it down to a manageable amount. This causes every fifth song or so to be about Ira Hayes. Once parked and in the park, I heard Johnny Cash over the tennis courts. Jayne and I chuckled because we clearly could not escape him. I assumed some concert series was between acts and was soothing the crowd with Johnny Cash.
Then there he was, Johnny Cash (impersonated) himself. He was wrapping up “Folsom Prison Blues”. He stopped to tell the audience that he actually wrote a final verse to that song. He then re-picked the ambling line and sang Weird Al style about Canadian provincial politics, much to the enjoyment of the crowd. This was no small crowd either. It was filled with old ladies who probably thought the guy was Johnny Cash, long-haired professors that have never professed, mop-headed teenagers yelling “Play some ‘Hurt’!”, ladies with manageable haircuts nodding to each lyric, African-Canadians wearing Canadian flag tube socks and people pretending to be mounties, complete with red shirts and actual horses.
We took in all we could (about two songs) and walked over to the river. There was a crazy sunset that was aided by the smoke from the nearby wildfires. Then we went home (Thriftlodge), our heads hurting from trying to figure out what was Johnny Cash’s connection with Canadians.