Another drive to add to the bucket list.

I follow a few blogs on road trips and one of my favorites is Marathon Mouth which I first discovered when writing up one of our earlier road trips. Bill Corbett's posts are primarily focused on the food side of road tripping but occasionally there's a post on the trip itself. This is one of those posts....

One of the World's Grandest Drives: Through the Palouse Hills

Here's one of the photos from the post...

From the Marathon Mouth blog.....

Enjoy! 

Another trip to add to the bucket list

While looking over some more road trip articles I came across another stretch of highway to add to the bucket list that's not too far from home. The Beartooth Highway is a stretch of US Highway 212 that runs from Red Lodge MT through the Absaroka-Beartooth National Wilderness, reaching elevations nearing 3350m (11,000ft), to Cooke City MT and the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

Charles Kuralt called this the most beautiful highway in America. It even has its own website which features a 20 minute video.

From the Visit Yellowstone County website

Red Lodge is about nine hours south of our home in Calgary. It would be quite the trip if we first headed directly for the Beartooth and then made our return trip up through the Going To The Sun Highway and southern Alberta's Cowboy Trail both of which I've written about in earlier posts. This makes for a 2300km (1400mile) round trip. 

I'll close this post off with another Charles Kuralt quote:

"Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything."

Here's to backroads and less traveled routes! If you've driven the Beartooth please leave a comment!

A 'bucket list' drive: Bow Valley Parkway

In an earlier post I shared a link to an article listing five great Canadian roads you need to drive one day. One of those drives was the Bow Valley Parkway in Banff National Park. Here's a quote from that article on www.driving.ca that sums it up better than I can...

"Winding between Banff and Lake Louise inside Banff National Park, the Bow Valley Parkway (Highway 1A) is a remnant of a different time in Canadian motoring. The Parkway was built to be an enjoyable route to the glamorous Chateau Lake Louise hotel some 85 years ago. Today, it serves as a scenic alternative to the bustling TransCanada. The road actually splits the eastbound and westbound lanes at several different points for no apparent reason other than to send drivers along different curving paths. These “one lane” sections are delightfully twisty and fun." (Link to full article above)

My wife Sharon and I were on a mini vacation in the Banff/Canmore area and decided to drive the Parkway on a rather cool and damp afternoon. We took highway 1 west from Banff, past the eastern access to the Parkway to the western end at Lake Louise.

Approaching the eastern access to the Bow Valley Parkway.

Westbound on the Trans-Canada Highway Weather starts to close in near Castle Mountain.

 

Bow Valley Parkway entry sign

Me and the Festiva at the west entrance to the Bow Valley Parkway.

There are a number of spots along the way with exhibits of one sort or another. We chose to stop at Johnston Canyon and save the rest for a day trip of their own. Johnston Canyon is a short distance east of the mid point of the Parkway. It's a popular tourist stop during the summer with the parking lot overflowing and large crowds up and down the trail. Being off-season, mid-week and with iffy weather we found a parking spot very close to the beginning of the trail and very few people around. 

Some straight bits...

 

Some curvy bits...

The Parkway has a split personality....

Two lanes rejoin.

Johnston Canyon is a beautiful spot. If you plan to go on a weekend and especially during high season we would recommend that you either get there early, before 10:00am, or later in the day, say after 4:00pm. That way you should miss the bulk of the tour busses that have this as part of their itinerary.

One of many catwalks on the way up the canyon

Upper falls in Johnston Canyon, May 7, 2015

On the way down.

A beautiful afternoon for a stroll in the mountains....

A little bit east of Johnston Canyon you will find a gate! From this point to the eastern portal the Parkway is only open from 08:00 until 20:00. There is a major wildlife corridor in the area so the closure, along with the low 60kph speed limit, was implemented to reduce animal/car collisions.

Grazing elk spotted in a meadow just east of Johnston Canyon.

The weather co-operated while we did the hike to the upper falls in the canyon, with a little bit of sunshine and very little precipitation. Once we left the parking lot we ran into quite a bit of rain so didn't get a lot of photos. This trip down the Parkway reinforces my opinion that you don't have to go fast to thoroughly enjoy a drive.

Tree in the way? No problem, we'll just split the lanes around it!

So there you have it. One drive off the bucket list. We'll be trying to fit in a couple of close drives listed in the linked article over the summer.  For our Alberta and British Columbia readers please be sure to let us know what your favorite drive is. I'm hoping to put together a list of reasonably local drives, perhaps something that could be done as a day trip.

Thanks to Sharon for taking the photos.