Woohoo! We got to Canada!! That was a great milestone for us. First land border crossing of the trip. We started really early and we were the only one at the border. On Canadian side, they asked few questions and we were in!! We entered Canada from Roosville, Montana and the roads on Canadian side were empty. And we were back to the world of km/h and Liter!
First step for us was finding some Wifi to activate our Starlink that we recently bought in the USA, before heading into the wilderness. After setting up our Starlink and doing the first grocery shopping in Canada, we headed toward a remote lake that Amir found on the map with the hope to find a quiet spot to chill out and relax for few days.
We found the lake and were the only one there. We set up camp there for 3 days before starting our journey in Canada.
We entered Canada end of June to be out of the USA before the fourth of July, as we heard that it will be really hard to find camping spot anywhere in the USA. What we didn’t know was the fact that 1st of July is Canada day and a long weekend in Canada. And it was exactly the weekend that we started our trip in Rocky Mountains.
We’ve entered the national parks from Kootenay National Park. At the entrance, you can buy tickets which gives you access to Kootenay, Banff and Jasper national parks. We bought a 3 day pass and drove through Kootenay National park toward Trans-Canadian Highway which goes through Banff and Jasper national parks. The Junction is a bit north of Banff and we decided to avoid Banff and carry on North toward Jasper. The drive was beautiful and having rocky mountains in the background was a feast to our eyes.
But, it was the long weekend and we were in a touristy spot!! And Canadian drivers were insane n narrow, mountain passes!! To our surprise, despite the beautiful scenery, the first day of our drive in Canada was exhausting. Since we couldn’t camp in national parks, we took an exit between Banff and Jasper national parks to set up camp for the night, outside national parks and come up with the plan on how to spend our time wisely in the parks.
We started our second day early to beat the traffic on the Icefields Parkway toward Jasper. We selected few short hike and stops that we wanted to visit and tried to plan our time wisely to visit them all before reaching to Jasper.
Unlike the first day that the weather was gloomy, the weather was on our side and we had a great day on the road. We visited Glaciers, Waterfalls and classic Rocky sceneries and got the deep feeling of being in Canada for real.
We also met an another couple from Germany, overlanding in their Troopy. It was a great feeling walking back to our car after a hike and find another troopy parked right in front of us.
We reached Jasper late in the afternoon and after a short stop, we decided to leave the national park and head North and West deep into Alberta and then British Columbia, as we had a very long drive in the remote parts of Canada ahead of us and we were sure that those stretch of the roads won’t be as crowded as these national parks.
The deeper we got in the north western parts of Alberta, all we could see was forests and oil rigs deep in the forests. Tourist cars replaced with big utes and heavy trucks and the roads were long! We passed two cities, Grande Cache and Grand Prairie, before leaving Alberta behind and get back into British Columbia.
We knew that Canada is huge and covering distances will take time but after covering the first stretch of the road in Alberta, we started to feel the real scale of things here. Regarding the access to supplies, things are different in Canada comparing to the states. We had easier access to grocery and supplies, even when we were thinking that we were remote in the states but in Canada, our access was really really limited. It will just get more interesting the more we head north I guess.
In the next post, we continue toward the famous Alaskan highway and few things start to go sideways in our plan. Till then, take care and enjoy life.
