#canada17

Upon our arrival to Jasper we followed the directions of the young lady who dropped us off at the edge of town (right off the highway): follow the trail and that’ll take you into town.

We stretched our legs after the long drive from Lake Louise to Jasper and made the hike into town from the Trans-Canadian Highway. The first thing we did was walk under a train bridge (while a train was on it). It was loud.

We made our way into Jasper which, little did we know at the time, would become a comfortable week-long stay. I say comfortable in the sense that we had a nice tent to sleep in every night, but it was a bit... under the radar, so we had to pack up and take our things with us every day.

We spent days lazing around in the green spaces near the visitor’s center watching (and hearing) the trains go by --

Afternoons/evenings in the local brewing company and/or anyplace we found that served good beer at reasonable prices and had electric outlets --

We languished in the internet and Martin was able to catch a footy match (live!) on a really fucking big TV --

We ate some nachos, burgers, and generally had a good time.

We met a fellow bum who was travelling with two dogs: one big, one small. The big one was old, soft, and gentle. The little one was young, content, and just wanted a warm lap to sleep on. We exchanged words with him a few times, and on the third day we ended up drinking cider and whiskey in the green space near the visitors’ centre. The little dog fell asleep on my lap very promptly. I fell asleep not long afterward, and much talk of trainhopping, listening to Days n Daze, and more drinking commenced while I was taking a nap. A good night was had by all.

The next morning we woke up under our cozy blanket on the porch of the visitors’ centre, nudged by an employee telling us we had to move. I roused Martin and we transferred ourselves to another spot where we slept for another couple of hours (it was a bit wet so we got out the tarp). It was about there we realized the difference between “chilling in the park” and “being tragically homeless” is whether you have legitimate looking sleeping gear out or not. Blanket and backpacks: A-OK. Tarp and fluffy sleeping quilt: Doesn’t matter how much that ultralight shit cost you, you look homeless as hell fam.

We charged up all our shit in Jasper then headed up the Saturday Night Lake Loop to a backcountry campground on Minnow Lake.

Poorly named, it ended up; the lake had very limited fishing opportunity, almost none from the shore. We were at the reeds’ behest, which caused us to give up in frustration after no more than ten casts.

The weather was subpar the entire time (overcast, cold), I came down with a not-great cough (it hurt), and the trail/campground wasn’t very scenic (especially with the smoke pollution from the fires in BC; the air smelled like smoke if you sniffed, and the mountains weren’t even visible above the lake’s immediate treeline for days).

We met a Dutch guy who was very enthusiastic about going barefoot and plastic liquor bottles (he apparently had pretended to be Scottish while he was in Quebec) and a couple who had never backpacked to a campsite before who worked at an Apple store in Edmonton. They advised us that AlpineAire (a brand of dehydrated camping food) is likely to taste like cleaning chemicals. I’m honestly not surprised, and it makes me feel even better about our continually honed camping menu (instant mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, Knorr sides, fresh parmesan or other cheeses, semi-dried meat sticks, etc etc...) on both price point and flavor point.

We hiked back to Jasper after staying at Minnow awhile and, while it was all downhill, didn’t really spare our legs. Ends up prolonged downhill can also take a toll on calves. Who knew.

Once we got back to Jasper we stayed a night, to restock (re-drink), re-food, recharge (electronically and otherwise), then our last night in our precious homeless-camping spot to hit the road.

We hiked to the highway, West, or Ouest (French) as it told us, and attempted to position ourselves in a strategic spot for hitchhiking. I was afraid it was going to take awhile, since there wasn’t too much traffic going west in the first place and people were mostly either dayhiking or in campers.

Maybe just shy of a half an hour elapsed and a couple in a crossover stopped to pick us up; Martin asked if they were French “No”, then French-Canadian “No...” honestly, after so long listening to people in Canada speak French, most foreign languages that roll off the tongue sound French. It ended up the couple was Polish, and we were able to stick our packs in their “trunk”, and they were super, super, SUPER fucking nice.

And they were going to Vancouver!

We ended up hitchhiking with them the entire way from Jasper to Vancouver, AND they dropped us off at our Airbnb. Regardless of that, though, they were really great people. I’ll omit their names here, but the guy was a developer (living in Canada a couple of years) and the girl was ex-IT (she definitely knew some sort of programming and had quit her job in Poland to come to Canada). When we told them our story of not really being able to be in the same country and quitting our jobs to be together, they definitely had a bit of a chuckle. I just hope we entertained them enough. I really liked them and I hope I can repay them in the future somehow because the drive was...8...9? hours and that’s really incredible, honestly. And after all that, they dropped us off at our airbnb.  The airbnb was an in-flight decision and reservation; the couple offered they could put us up if we didn’t find anywhere to sleep but they’d done so much already I couldn’t imagine asking that of them.  We found a room we could hang out and shower and cook dinner (woo more Kraft(tm) Dinner(tm) as is Canadian ritual) for a reasonable price, so we went for it.

I guess that concludes this segment of our trip; we exchanged emails and numbers with the couple who gave us a lift, and I really hope to repay them (somehow!) in the future, if not before we leave the country in two weeks. From here it’ll be exploring the city and finding our way to Vancouver Island -- from there to hippie mecca Tofino, which I think should be easily enough found and unfound, based on the miles of dreadlocks we’ve encountered telling us how great Tofino is.

Unfortunately, but skillfully, our Canadian leg of 2017 is drawing to a close.

Hand progression

Home sweet home, but not anymore.

Martin taking a swim.

Proof we went to Lake Louise: you can see it through Martin’s earhole.

More Cr15 views

Heineken and cheese courtesy of the wonderful Canadians.