Our Northern Neighbors

7/21/2017

Friday, July 21^st marked another first for me: a visit to our neighbors to the north! It may also mark another first for Jane, though I’m not sure if she's ever been to Canada. It seems unlikely, given her fairly pampered roots and Southern heritage, but you never know – one of her previous owners may have had a wandering streak just as bad as mine! Regardless, I’ve never been to Canada, so at least it was a first for one of us.

The border is really only 10 miles or so up the road from Glacier, so it comes up on you fast. It seems like Jane and I had just gotten on the road when suddenly we were in the bay of the border inspection building, being thoroughly inspected.

Yeah, I guess it’s pretty weird that a chick from Texas might decide to drive her half-century-old muscle car up to Canada because she wanted to “get cold”. But really, that’s what I wanted to do… customs was not amused. The guy repeatedly told me, “you are not under arrest, I just want to talk to you in this room over here” and I repeatedly went, “cool, whatever, I’ve got time” which may or may not have been the correct answer.

I ended up giving him the entire play-by-play of the trip thus far, as well as what seemed like my entire academic and work history for the past six years of my life. But finally, after some deliberation, he was as satisfied as he was going to be and Jane and I were released from our respective holding areas. Thankfully, they didn’t insist on unpacking her to go through all of my belongings – or we would have been there all day and they would have accused me of being in possession of a Mary Poppins’ handbag-esque vehicle.

From there, it was up into the great unknown – sometimes referred to as the “Great White North” among some of my friends. People measure things in silly units and say silly phrases up here, I’ve heard. First impressions verified that.

Is this entire country yellow?! Oh god, what if it is??

Well, that's a name for ya.

How I verified I was in Canada

Holy speed limits Batman!

 I was smart enough to take care of the unit conversions for speed limits prior to entering Canada, at least.

However, I was not smart enough to remember that gas is measured in liters (litres) rather than gallons here, and consequently I found myself at a gas station staring at the pump in great consternation, trying to figure out how much gas I’d need to fill the tank. This is embarrassing because I’m a scientist and should be able to do metric conversions easily. But I just don’t work with volumes of fluid, so… I kind of just mentally compared the volume of a 2-liter of Coke with the volume of a gallon of water, and figured that they were more or less equivalent.

I was very wrong.

A gallon is equivalent to 3.79 liters, not 2 liters.

Consequently, I was at gas stations constantly for the first couple of hours, trying to figure out why I was losing so much gas when really the problem was that I just wasn’t really putting any in.

Finally, some lady took pity on me and told me that I could just press a button on the screen to authorize a maximum fill of $200, which would let me fill my tank to the brim but would not actually charge me the full $200, instead charging me whatever the price of the gas was.

This was very helpful and I felt extremely stupid, so I stopped in at a nearby information center to ask a bunch of other random questions I had acquired by then. The very nice information lady got me all sorted, gave me a bunch of maps with ideas of places to visit in Banff and Jasper (my eventual destinations), and then informed me that pretty much all of Canada is on fire right now, so good luck actually seeing any of those things.

Oh.

Well, whatever. It’s the Rockies – it has to be awesome anyways! So I steamed full ahead into Banff National Park, trying not to look too stereotypically American (and failing – I mean, duh). The mountains looked like they would be spectacular, if they weren’t covered in a thick layer of haze and clouds and awfulness. At least these pictures make them look dramatic.

Now, since this whole post seems probably a bit disappointing, I should add in some details about what I’m doing up here in this place! This year is Canada’s 150^th anniversary, and they’re celebrating it by making all of their national parks free to enter for the whole year! What a spectacular idea. I sent in for my parks pass months ago and they were kind enough to mail it to me down in the States for free.

I’ve seen pictures of the incredible beauty of Banff National Park many times over the past few years, and it’s definitely piqued my interest. Soaring mountain vistas, wildflowers, lakes, bears, and moose – what’s not to love? So I vowed I’d see Banff on this year’s trip, since I’d be up at Glacier anyways. From there it was a simple matter of Googling to find out that its sister park to the north, Jasper, is also a park of incredible beauty. So I added that to the list too.

I’ll be in Banff and Jasper for a cumulative 7 days, enjoying the cool weather, new sights, and hopefully good scenery! Stay tuned. Until then… Kelly signing out.