Day 17, Tuesday September 27th

Banff-Pincher Creek

Bow River Banff

It is still raining, the mountains are invisible and the weather forecast is for more rain and cold weather the coming week. We had planned to drive along the Icefield Parkway towards Jasper, the most spectacular route in the Rockies, but it is not to be and pointless to waste our time driving along invisible glaciers. We enjoy a breakfast in a beautiful hotel and conference center which belongs to the same owners as our modest motel. The view is beautiful, but would be much better if we could see the mountains.

We leave Banff driving East along highway 1. Once we come down on the other side of the Rockies, the weather improves greatly and it is dry and sometimes even sunny. In Canmore we buy provisions for our picnic

We turn unto the 1A towards Kananaskis, where we follow highway 40 going south, east of the Rockies and along its ridge. We stop at Canoe Meadows for our picnic lunch, basking in the sun with a view of the golden aspen. Rafters are enjoying the river and it is fun watching them coming down the rapids. It is bear country, but we don’t see any.

Highway 40 is a beautiful and quiet road, once an unpaved logging road. There is hardly any traffic so we stop frequently to take pictures of the beautiful scenery: the yellow aspen and dark green pines,, and the Rockies which are on our right hand side.

At Highwood Pass we have a splendid view of snowy mountain tops, so we are quite happy. At 2.206 meters it is the highest navigable pass in Canada and the summit is just about at the tree line. If we had come here earlier in the year, the alpine meadows would have been in full bloom.

At Highwood House – hardly a village but actually just one building – we take route 541 east towards Longview, away from the Rockies.

Longview is what the name says it is, a very tiny speck on the map, rather high on a plain with open skies and fantastic views in all directions, also towards the blue mountainrange in the distance. This is ranch country with grasslands and hayfields, horses, cowboys.

Except for a very unpromising hotel along the highway, everything else seems closed for the season, so we have no choice. However, the coffee and the cakes are rather good. There are two elderly couples at another table. When one of the men hears us speaking Dutch, he addresses me. He is originally Dutch, born in Andijk, and emigrated to these parts of Canada in the fifties with his parents when he was 8 . He lives in Alberta and is touring around with another couple. It is amazing that in the most unexpected places we meet people who are of Dutch origin. We leave Longview which has some 300 inhabitants, spread over a large rural area.

We take route 22 south and approach the Rockies again. At Lundbreck we turn east towards Pincher Creek, a very small town. The Ramada Inn is fully booked. On the other side of town we find several rather seedy motels, but strike lucky with the Stardust motel, not very upmarket, but clean and run by a friendly young couple. Apparently this is an oil town, and the cheaper motels are for workers in the oil industry. We rent two interconnecting motel rooms. Surprisingly there is a nice restaurant, bistro Denise, within a stone’s throw of the motel, where we enjoy a very nice meal of salmon, pilaf rice and very fresh and crisply cooked vegetables.

During the night we wake up because of a freak storm , which causes a lot of rattling and a terrible draught.