Ride share to Banff
While the rideshare itself was relatively uneventful, seen as a fortunate, rather than unfortunate thing, the views of the Rocky Mountains along the way was just mind blowing. We left at 8am and I being somewhat tired from the hat party of the night before, napped for a majority of the morning. The views as can be seen below, speak for themselves. If they could not speak for themselves I’m sure they would be saying things like, “Look at me, ain’t I huge and snowy, like a tall white man”.
Banff
We finally rolled into Banff, somewhat after sunset after a massive day on the road, ready to eat, sleep and not much else. This ended up being the first time we could not find someone to host us for couch surfing, Thus we had to be content with a hostel, at about $35 a night, while not cheap, was the cheapest option in Banff. But we did managed to get free breakfast and a bus pass though. Randomly a friend of mine Ben, whom was working on the mountains happened to be at the same place. So he took us out to one of the cheap local restaurants for a 3 course spaghetti meal. We made ridiculously good use of the infinite garlic bread, 5 loaves between 3 people, was not bad I thought.
Some of the good things enjoyed in the time of Banffness was the Hot Pools which had amazing views of the surrounding Rocky Mountains but at the same time, just felt like a small and yet overtly hot public pool with how crowded they were. The ever present danger of ingesting small child super heated urine, kept my head and mouth out of the 40C of liquid fun.
The delectable cold snow and ice did lead to some amazing picturesque moments though, while walking along the river, to doing a mild forest trek and even trying to stop Crystal breaking her ankle in the icey conditions.
Downsides, hostels, while they can be a great communal place to meet people from countries other than the one you are currently travelling through, they can also provide an unwilling habitat to the creature most mothers try to keep from escaping from their natural enclosure of the bedroom. The animals I would be writing of are none other than the stinky teenager, and in Banff said stinky teens originated from one of 3 countries, Australia, UK and Japan. The key reason being the easy to get Work and Travel visa, Canada just gives out these things like candy. The largest percentage of stinky primates at the HI hostel I was residing originated from the UK, none of them aged older than 20, thus can only be assumed to be gap year kiddies. Happily working on the slopes for a pittance, while all the time gaining valuable life experiences that Canada had to offer, delving into such as the intellectual forays of drinking and getting blazed.
As much as it would seem, I don’t really have an issue with these peanuts, but what I had a problem with was sharing a room with three of them. Upon opening the door to the dorm room, I was olfactorily assaulted, being forced to keep it open for a full 30min while their’ collective scents could be adequately aired out of the room. Clearly general body hygiene and the concept of regularly laundering ones clothes had not been sufficiently drilled into their ethanol fermented brains.
Random Point
Steak and BJ day was 14th March.
The travel from Banff to the biggest city in Alberta, Calgary turned out to be far more exciting than most could imagine. Just on the outskirts of Calgary, the car we were travelling in got involved in a spot of bother. According to witnesses, the car rolled about 4 to 5 times and from the point of impact to the time it stopped on its wheels it was about 100 meters down the road on the other side of the highway. With cuts and bruises being the majority of injuries to all four of us, it was a sign from above that it was not my time. Within minutes of it happening, police, fire and ambulance had arrived and treating us all. Side note, health care system of Canada, very good, while my insurance bill is not cheap, it is still very good. We all got sent via ambulance while strapped into C-splints to the hospital and I got sent to another hospital different to everyone else, Rockyview hospital. After some X-Rays to check my head was still attached I was discharged and pointed in the direction bus that could take me to the other hospital where everyone house was being treated.
That night ended up being spent at a hotel, as none of us had access to our bags, they had all been recovered by the police, for us to collect in the morning. A delicious meal of pizza and cola was consumed at the Hotel, which had an indoor pool, unfortunately it could not be used, as all our bathing suits were residing with the constabulary.
This day was also Crystal birthday, it was not celebrated exactly the way she would have liked it to.
Calgary
When everything was retrieved from the PoPo in the morning, Praise Jesus, nothing was broken, not my lappy, nor my camera, even my bright ass yellow sunglasses survived the 100km/hr roll over.
Calgary is the biggest city in the state of Alberta, incidentally it also looks like it was designed in the 1970’s and hasn’t changed since then, with just the occasional spit polish to get things all spiffy for visitors. But what really made the city for me was Melissa, our courchsurfing host in the Big C. She was her own force of nature, bike riding, volunteering, pen paling and just generally being an all around amazing person. While she was busy most of the time we were there we did manage to have some extended chats with her and her brother late into the evening about travels to Africa and some of the other interesting couchsurfers that had graced her couch.
Calgary to the USA
Getting the hell out of Canada, far more challenging overland than first thought. Originally the thought process was, Alberta is north of Montana, we should in theory be able to get out the same way we got in, just take a bus south. Wrong. As far south as buses go from Calgary is to the exciting town of Lethbridge, which is still about another 100km from the Northern frontier. Thus in order to get into Montana from Calgary we had 4 options, rent a car one way from Alberta to Montana (turned out no car rental company allowed one way rentals from Canada to the States), take a private shuttle bus from Calgary to Great Falls for $500, catch a flight, where the cheapest available flight was about $350 each or take the Greyhound as far south as we could get, then hitch for the rest of the way to Sweet Grass, border town USA.
Clearly the first two viable options were way out of our budget for such a short leg of the trip. Thus we took Greyhound and then hitchhiked the rest of the way. Yes there was a slight risk we could be carted away Wolf Creek style, murdered and then our mangled corpses be molested and sodomised by cold flesh hungry rednecks. But it was a highly unlikely risk we were willing to take. Calgary bus station was amusing though, all passengers were metal checked and padded down. Then luggage being pulled apart in search of weapons or alcohol. This was the first time I had seen this occur outside of Mexico. Asking around to the other passengers why the high level of security, turns out a couple of years ago a guy on the same route we were about to travel on down to Lethbridge had randomly used a hunting knife to cut off the head of the passenger sitting next to him.
This was not very reassuring news when we were about to hitchhike.
The hitching itself was not too difficult, in the 1.5-2 hours that it took us to get to the border we managed to get 4 rides, essentially just jumping from one tiny town to the next, waiting for 30 minutes at the longest wait time. The worst part about the waiting was that we were stuck out in the freezing cold Chinook wind that was blowing down from the Rockies, so strong at times that we were nearly getting blown over while wearing our packs. In order of drivers, we got lifts off a horse trainer, mechanic, three 18 year old kids, and a mother and daughter to get us to Coutts, the border town on the Canadian side.
When we actually got to the border itself we were presented with a slight difficulty. Unlike the southern border we were so used to, on the northern side there was no pedestrian walkway. Only three lanes for trucks and one for cars, we chose the car lane, mainly because it seemed like the only one that was actually manned. This is where the antics began and lasted for some time as we were detained on the border between Canada and the United States.
Some classic quotes from Border Patrol while being questioned.
“How did you get here?”
“We hitchhiked”
Looks at us questioningly, “In winter?”
We look around, to as if see if our invisible car has magically become revealed to the naked eye.
“Yes”
“How did you get so many stamps in your passport?”
“I traveled to these countries”
“How did you pay for all this travel?”
“I worked”
“and what did you do?”
“Cleaner Production Consultant for a water business”
He goes quiet.
“that’s enough, sit down”
“You have a flight out of the United States?”
“Yes”
“Show me the ticket”
“I don’t have it on me, it’s electronic”
“and then how do you know where it is?”
“I use my laptop to check my email….”
“Just go sit down”
There were more, but these were just some of the highlights.
We finally walked across to Sweet Grass, MT after the detainment with border security, ready for food, drinking and passing out. We managed to find the only bar, motel and restaurant in the entire town, who were fortunate to have some emergency rooms available for us.
Quote from bartender after we enquired about accommodation situation, “The motel is for emergencies only”, we pretty much looked at the bartender, wondering if she meant if we didn’t want this, we could be pitching our tent outside.
But there was no greater way to celebrate St Patricks Day than with a couple of PBR’s and a nice Sub sandwich. A perfect end to a very long day.
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