Pete decided to hang with me for two more days before going back to work at Microsoft, so we planned our most aggressive drive yet, a whole 326 miles! We’ve discovered that stopping, taking pictures, smoking cigars, and generally enjoying ourselves is not conducive to covering ground — so we pretty much gave up covering a lot of ground.

Dave cooked us breakfast, and we lingered over coffee (since the border crossing we planned to use didn’t open until 9 am), and then the navigator (me) missed the turn off into Canada. On the way back, after a pleasant little half hour side trip, I found the curve, and promptly low-sided at 5 MPH in first gear. Luckily I had a wingman to help upright the bike and we were on our way. There’s a reason boys and girls that you wear the right gear!

The result was that we found ourselves finishing lunch at 1:30 a mere 60 miles from whence we started. We actually had to limit ourselves to only two stops to make Banff by 7:30. The last two hours of our drive were through Kootenay National Park. We saw deer, bald eagles, and bighorn sheep too numerous to keep count, and three moose (“mooses” if you are from the South). They were all so close to the road that I was praying “Lord, I know that I’ve asked to go on a moose hunt, but I really don’t want to kill one with a bike.”

If you haven’t been up here, this is a beautiful drive. Even in a cage, a hem, I mean a car.

We topped the evening off at Saltlick with a medium rare filet, and Pete took it upon himself to fulfill a personal request from Peter Madison.

Banff, Alberta to Valemount, BC

Here is a taste of the early part of the day:

Banff, Alberta to Valemount, BC

Here is a taste of the early part of the day:

Then it turned stormy on the other side of the mountains and we spent another three hours sans sunshine. Tomorrow is a big day and we have over 100 photos to sort through and a very slow connection, so I’ll save the commentary until later and leave you with these shots for now:

Here’s where we went during my six days with Bill …

To quote the kid at the end of the movie Hook; “That was a great story.”

We started saying our theme would be” finding a sustainable rhythm to life” but quickly changed it to “this does not suck.”

Some thoughts …
– The road from Banff to Jasper has to be the most beautiful scenery on this continent. Rankin was right on this call … from his tour guide college days.
– Every man should do this.
– I love seeing little boys in the back window wave … you know they are dreaming of growing up and riding the mountains. I think I heard Bill say, “all the men who see us want to be us and all the women want to be with us.” But I could be wrong?
– Riding down the mountain from Jasper in the pounding rain with little visibility and slippery roads will test a man and make him appreciate a hot cup of coffee.
– There are beautiful women everywhere.
– This was great but would have been even greater if there was a group of us riding …
– Dave and Sue Chambers are wonderful people.
– Marble gets close to a sustainable rhythm to life.
– I felt more close to the Bald Eagles I saw soaring over the Rockies in Banff than ever before.

– Having the proper gear is mandatory. Riding in the cold and rain was no problem since we bold could just ‘gear up’. Only the ride down from Jasper was a bit of a test. The rest of the time we were warm and dry and having the time of our lives.
– Good friends salt a trip like this well. Our time with Bob and Conner to start the trip, Moon and the Master Chief in the Tri Cities and then Dave and Sue Chambers in marble were as great as the ride and the scenery.
– The Master Chief has no end of stories. He owes us two he couldn’t tell in front of Jake.
– Moon has no end of Moonisms.
– You meet some wonderful people on a ride. The others are easy enough to ignore.
– Seems that everywhere has a great local Pale Ale?
– The Salt Lick in Banff is a great place to eat.
– The Duck Brand is a great place to stay in Winthrop. We had the perfect bowl of oatmeal there.

When we were here … … a man walked by and gandered at the bikes twice (can’t remember his name … Bill will). So we started talking to him. He was from England with his wife Paula. He said he dreamed of being a Harley man but so far only had the hat. As Bill showed him his bike and gear Paula told me he was dying of cancer and this was their trip to make the most of the rest of his days since they didn’t know how many he had left. I told her I had several friends that beat cancer but she said he’d already had all the surgery and chemo and it kept coming back. Pray for them. He was a delight; told us about his motorcycles and his “Bubble car” that had never been rained on! I asked Paula if she liked to ride behind him; she said she did but knew he wanted to get out on the road alone and not worry about if she was ok back there so she sent him out alone.

We will do this again … to be continued …

Looking forward to ‘watching’ the rest of your trip Bill. Make the most of it.

The rest of you need to start planning to get a bike and join us on the next ride. And we’ll all have to start figuring out how to take Paul Jackson up on his invitation to ride around New Zealand! We can all fly down and rent?

This is a great way to live!

Well, Pete has about said it all. And Bob was correct, the ride from Banff to Jasper is one of the most picturesque I’ve ever experienced. I made a trip from Denver to Banff in 1983 and fell in love with the Rocky Mountains. With every mile I can feel that love affair being rekindled.

Here are a few more of the over 100 photos that Pete and I took on the way up to the ice fields.

Just past the ice fields, it started to cloud up and spit snow. Pete convinced me to suit up for rain and it’s’ a good thing he did — just past Jasper, the bottom dropped out. That kind of riding will test you. Two hours later, when we finally found a safe place to stop and wait out the rain, we decided to forgo the remainder of the day and find a place to dry out. All the gear worked well except the gloves — after about an hour in the rain they were no longer waterproof.

Here is a detailed map of a trip we highly recommend you take:

Valemount, B.C. to Seattle (Pete)
Valemount, B.C. to Northport (Bill)

Dry, well rested on 10 hours of sleep, and with sunny skies, we saddled up for Pete’s last leg of the journey. The only wildlife we saw today was a very large black bear on the side of the road. I rode by thinking “Sit! Stay!” It did, and we made good time to Merritt, B.C. (the “Country Music Capital of Canada”) where we had lunch, grabbed a quad espresso and split up with Pete headed to Seattle and I back to Northport to spend a another day with the Chambers.

While this ride didn’t have the grandeur of the Rockies, it was beautiful nonetheless. About an hour and a half of the ride was down Hwy 97 beside Okanagan Lake.

I’ve been thankful for many things on this trip, but after nine hours in the saddle, I was most thankful that Jeff Meehan loaned me his AirHawk air seat. It was a Godsend, thanks Jeff!

Our routes: