Day Four: Revelstoke, BC to Banff, AB
Distance: 176 miles
We spent Sunday morning searching for an auto parts store that would be open and, hopefully, on the way to Banff. We lucked out with a place called Lordco right in the middle of our route, in Golden, BC. We downed some coffee and a couple apples, gassed up, and pulled into the tiny town of Golden about two hours later. Victor spent a lot of time going in and out of the shop with various parts that were either the wrong size or incompatible with the available tools. I found a comfy spot in the shade and browsed Reddit on my phone while being real stealthy with my camera.
In hindsight, I guess I could have used that time to start working on this blog, but oh well, it’s a vacation, right? Anyway, as his hands became covered in more and more grease, Victor recruited me to Car Fixing Assistant Extraordinaire (I personally preferred Paper Towel Distribution Engineer), and I handed him clamps and wrenches and lots of paper towels.
As Victor worked, the occasional person would ask about the car or offer to help, which he politely declined. In his words it was, “pretty much a one person job.” That changed when a man who later introduced himself as Edward wouldn’t take no for an answer. He seemed very knowledgeable about cars and when it became evident that the CV boot clamp tool wasn’t compatible with the boot clamps Lordco had, he insisted on driving back to his house where he had a bunch of very highly specialized and difficult to find precision tools – zip ties. His were contractor grade, very fancy, he informed us. He returned with a bunch of zip ties, and a friend, Chris, in case we needed an extra set of hands. This was very convenient for me. As Edward and Victor worked on the car (boring), Chris and I discussed American politics, movies, and national parks (not boring). He even gave us a Discovery Pass which allowed us to have free admission to all of Canada’s National Parks! Throughout the process, Edward ran to his home and back no less than four times to pick up other tools, and when we thanked him profusely, he admitted he was really surprised that more people hadn’t already offered to help us. So far, Canada is the #1 place to be if you need a place to stay, a place to drink and talk about cars, or happen to have car issues.
Victor felt comfortable with the fix for now, so we shifted focus to our next priority – lunch. We walked for a few minutes and found a sports bar with outdoor seating. The view was pretty awesome, and there was an entire page of poutine dishes on the menu. Jackpot.
I know taking photos of your food is a super annoying-millennial-hipster thing to do, but just look at this. It’s Mexi-poutine, which is basically Canadian nachos, which, if you know me, means I was in the right place.
Also, we needed to carb up for all the hiking we would do later that afternoon (as if I need an excuse to eat carbs). We finished our food, walked back to the car, and left for Moraine Lake.
We started seeing signs for Moraine Lake and I was getting pretty excited as we sloowwwwly made our way up the mountain. There was a fair amount of traffic going up the hill, and speed limits in Canada seemed sooo slow compared to the US. There was lots of gorgeous scenery to admire, so it was still a lovely drive. That was until we hit a pretty sizable bump and heard a weird “card in bicycle spokes,” noise coming from the front end of the car. Victor pulled over, observing that the brakes felt “mushy.” Did I mention that our AAA coverage wouldn’t start until the following day?
Victor inspected everything under the front hood while passersby asked if we were okay and kindly offered to tow us into town if we needed it. I started doing damage control as best as I could, looking up how far our hotel was from there and if there was a shop nearby that could repair whatever was broken. There was some liquid dripping onto the ground under the car which I knew was bad, but when Victor mentioned something about the radiator, my heart sank. He kept poking around so I kept thinking of alternative plans. Eventually, he realized that the radiator was fine – the liquid we saw was actually brake fluid from the (very high tech in 1991) ABS system. I assumed we were still screwed, since we would definitely need brakes to drive anywhere. I’m lucky Victor knows as much about cars as he does, because it turns out that if you just remove the ABS fuse, it turns the ABS system off and you can still drive the car perfectly fine. Unless you need to stop REALLY quickly, of course. I’m told this is a feature Honda added to their cars so you could still drive even if you lost ABS. Thanks, Honda!
He removed the fuse and we pulled back onto the road. After a couple brake-check tests, Victor was confident in his diagnosis. (Victor here, wanted to give my perspective). I figured that when we hit the bump, it activated the (also very high tech for 1991) traction control system, which uses the ABS. In a 26 year old car, it’s not surprising that the ABS actuator solenoids were sticky and probably hadn’t been activated in a very long time (this is a common issue for these cars, as it was a very early ABS system. End Victor). It’ll have to be fixed, but at least we weren’t stranded on a mountain.
We arrived at Moraine Lake, both of us eager for some kind of distraction. We added an extra day to our trip specifically so we could see Banff, AB, and we made sure it would be a short driving day to maximize the time we could spend hiking. A colleague of mine grew up in Alberta and when she heard about our road trip, she came to my desk and insisted that we drive through southern British Columbia and stop there. She showed me photos from her family vacation and she had to convince me they hadn’t been photoshopped. Let me assure you, this place does not disappoint. It was breathtaking.
We hiked all the way to the end of the lake and back. We weren’t nearly ready to leave, so we looked up another trail that began at a huge pile of rocks, aptly named The Rockpile. As we made our way around the pile toward the other side of the lake, we were stopped by a group of people huddled on a particularly large rock. They informed us that the trail was closed due to an accident ahead, and that we should turn around because a chopper was coming soon to medevac the injured hiker to the hospital. I felt bad that someone had been hurt, but I must admit – an incoming chopper sounded pretty badass. We turned back and hiked for a ways before finding a safe spot out of the way to skip rocks across the lake and wait for the chopper to arrive. Behold, only a few minutes later:
The chopper/ambulance/trail closure pretty much ended our time at Moraine Lake, but we had plenty of sunlight left, so we headed over to Lake Louise. You guys, if you ever have the opportunity to visit, you have to see this place. The pictures are beautiful, but in person it’s truly incredible.
We hiked around Lake Louise and back. As we headed to the car, we noticed a group of people gathered up on a hill. Curious to see what the fuss was about, we joined them to find a wild porcupine foraging in the distance! According to Wikipedia, they aren’t that rare or special, but neither of us had seen one, so we were pretty excited. The porcupine was far away so I only have one awful, grainy photo and this quick snap:
It was a long day. We were both looking forward to some hot food and a comfy bed, so we went back to the car and headed toward the highway. We thought we’d had enough excitement for one day, but of course, Canada had other plans. Just as we were leaving the park Victor spotted these guys by the side of the road!
Our waitress from the night before was right! She also recommended a pizza place which made it easy to decide where to go for dinner. As a bonus, we saw group of elk eating by the side of the road as we pulled into Banff, but we passed them too quickly to snap any pictures. Safely in Banff, we ended the night with delicious pizza and a few well-earned cocktails.
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