Footnotes to the Vertical Venture through the Mountains

Before I post these photos of the British Columbia mountains we saw. keep in mind several things. Many pictures were taken from the window, because there was no way we were stopping to photograph the spectacular scenery. Also, the mountain scenes may be somewhat out of order, as we had two and sometimes three cameras flicking away at one time. The key fact is that we did drive up and down most of them!

When we left Vancouver to head north toward Whistler, we marvelled at the great road. Funny thing, the quality quit just after Whistler. Thinking back, all that 2010 Olympics tourist traffic turned around at Whistler after viewing the skiing events and returned to Vancouver. We did not do that, of course. We continued on.

Just before we headed up the first STEEP grade, a two foot tall black bear cub scampered across the road, not 30 feet in front of us! It was so cute to see how it moved. We never saw it's mother, but we should have seen the omen for what it was...it was getting wild ahead.

To make the trip more exciting, we lost our exhaust brake (jake brake) that morning. We still haven't had a chance to have it looked at, and we have not been able to fix it ourselves. So, we have been braking with gears and camper brakes, as well as the truck brakes. Fun.

Today, we arrived in Banff National Park. We will try to catch up the blog during the next 6 days that we stay here. Everyone is ready for a break (...a brake, too...ha-ha).