Canada Trip - Part 2

[scapco at ecentral.com]

After a great sunny ride through Glacier Natl. park with 
Chuck Driscoll and his daughter and more sun on the way up 
to Banff, Monday I awoke to clouds and cool weather.  
Nonetheless, I decided to head up to Lake Louise 
(spectacular) and up to the Jasper Ice fields.  Lots of 
great scenery and glaciers on the way made the cool ride 
okay.  About 40 miles short, the skies turned black and 
rain started to fall.  I stopped at a gas 
station/restaurant for gas in heavy rain and was talking to 
the attendant who suggested it was probably snowing farther 
up the road.  Having crashes in snow once, I headed back 
down the hills to Banff where I sent the previous e-mail.
 
The next morning I awoke to rain so I had to pack 
everything up in the tent and get fully dressed before 
getting out.  I stuffed the wet tent in the sack, loaded up 
the bike and headed north to Lake Louise where Highway 1 
turned west towards the coast.  I went through Yoho 
National park wearing five layers of clothes on top and two 
on the bottom.  I actually managed to stay reasonably dry, 
and was just cold when I finally stopped for a white 
chocolate cappuccino to warm up.  I continued on through 
Canada’s Glacier national park and thru Revelstoke in 
intermittent rain before it finally stopped raining and was 
just cloudy.   I fueled up and headed west once more 
through the scenic lake  area around Siciamous that makes 
up Shuswap lake.  I stopped in Kamloops to get a Hardley T-
shirt, bs’ed with a couple of guys about how bad the pine 
beetle kill is there and went on to Cache Creek where I got 
a hotel so I could dry my tent out and get cleaned up.
 
The next morning, I packed up my now dry tent and loaded 
the bike and headed for hwy 99, the Sea to Sky highway.  
Lots more interesting scenery as the road is more of a back 
road along here.  Once again, it started raining and I rode 
down a twisty and bumpy road in the rain.  To make it 
worse, it got very foggy and I was riding on fairly squared 
off tires at this point.  Lots of white knuckle time until 
I got down to Pemberton where there was only a few 
sprinkles to go with the clouds.  I stopped a while later 
to get a few pictures at Whistler ski area where the 2010 
Winter Olympics will be held and then sat in road 
construction traffic off and on clear to Vancouver.

I stopped in Squamish to get a picture of my GPZ parked 
next to the ocean for posterity and then went down to 
Vancouver to Trev Deely Harley Davidson to get another t-
shirt.  This is quite a dealership as he is the Canadian 
distributor and has been owned by the Deely family since 
1917.  He had a nice museum of bikes and a rather nasty 
looking Goth chick behind the parts counter.  Next stop 
Horseshoe Bay to get the ferry over to Vancouver Island.

Charles S.