If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name

Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

So we hit the border last night around 3:30 AM (slightly later than planned – damn fruitless Yellowstone detour). I was wondering how they were going to receive us… Two Americans, a Scotsman and an Aussie – staying for less than 24 hours in the country except for the Aussie who is staying on a 12 month work Visa… all very complicated. But the only part that caused trouble was Dan’s visa. Apparently, the systems were down at all of the checkpoints across the border and there was no way for them to issue him his work permit. Now we panic for a solid 30 minutes probably. He either has to wait on the US side until 8 AM and then try again, or he can go into Canada as a visitor and return to the border within 10 days to get his permit. Seriously? Not cool.

So we opt for option 2, leaving the border patrol station just glad to be in Canada. That didn’t last long. We quickly realize that we’re almost out of gas and that the next official gas station is more miles away than we have gas in the tank. Now we’re also wondering if we will actually make it to Panorama in time to get Dan to work at 9 AM. There are HUNDREDS of deer off the side of the road and I, having been driving for almost 45 hours at this point without a break, am starting to see things. Thankfully, Mark chimes in with the perfect distraction and teaches us a great Irish drinking song called “Seven Drunken Nights” which we sing and perfect while coasting down the Canada mountains towards the gas station – which we luckily made.

We continue towards Panorama, it’s about 6 AM now, and now the REAL animals start to jump out at the car. We’re talking gigantic horse sized Elk hiding in the bushes and lurching out at us when we drove by. About 15 minutes outside of Dan’s apartment, I hit my brick wall and he takes over driving the home stretch. We arrive at the employee lodge and his apartment is ready and waiting for him. We stumble in, he takes a shower and we pass out three deep on his twin sized dorm style bed while he heads to his first day of work.

After a couple hours snooze, we say our goodbye’s and the three leftovers head towards Banff where Mark has now decided he wants to go for a couple days. We drive through Banff national park, which is, of course, beautiful. It’s always been one of my favorite places and it never gets old to drive through there. We attempt to take our picture at the Alberta border, but that was a disaster without our stellar time photographer, Dan. We meet up with Mark’s friend at the McDonald’s (go figure) in Banff and grab some lunch. After saying another set of farewell’s, Brian and I start the long trip home. As we calculate it, we have 25 hours to get back before the Chris Cornell show starts at 6:30 PM on Sunday. That’s going to require yet another straight through drive – yippee….

We drive through much of British Columbia and stop a couple times to take pictures and once to watch what’s called the “Spiral Bridge” which is a set of tunnels and bridges where trains descend from the mountains down to a lower elevation valley. It’s way cool and at one point you can see the train going in one side of a tunnel, out another and then through a spiral in the mountain and coming out right below itself. It’s just like a train set you would build in a garage, only… real!

About 30 minutes after the spiral train… I am done driving. So Brian takes over and starts his 24 hour streak. I pass out in the backseat for about the next 8 hours while Brian does his thing. We hit a pretty bad storm outside of Vancouver and run over a couple trees (or at least that’s what they looked like to me). Needless to say, I was laying in the backseat with all three seatbelts on in a strange fashion. I knew we had to book it, and I knew if I kept watching, I’d freak out, so I just laid down and said some prayers. I guess it worked fine!

Kalispell, MT --> Vancouver, BC, Canada
Miles travelled: 863
Time travelled: 23 hours

XOXO

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Vagabond Traveling Roadshow

Location: Kalispell, Montana, USA

So we continued on from Salt Lake City and into Idaho. Originally, we had planned on stopping somewhere either in Utah or Idaho to take a couple hour’s nap, but we’ve decided to trade that in for a trip to Yellowstone… I mean… why not?

Idaho… I’m really not sure why no one ever talks about Idaho. I was very impressed and am disappointed that it isn’t hyped up more! The Rockies here go from full sized down to these sort of muffled eroded Ozark looking mountains. There are tons of farm towns with colorful fields with snow capped peaks in the background. It’s stunning. The people here are almost Southern (almost) with their hospitality and to make things better, there’s relatively no one here, so the driving is perfect. Cruise control was invented here. We stopped to take pictures at the state line (which has a nice little no-man’s land – endlessly entertaining) as well as at a couple of picturesque little farms with perfect red barns and white picket fences. We then detoured off the main highway to cut across to Wyoming and wound our way through a couple open ranges (way cool) where we saw quite a few trucks parked on the side of the road and even a duo of hunters with their large rifles carrying something with antlers to their pickup. And now is about the time we start to get a little bored… So naturally… it’s time to break out the traveling band! Brian had brought a guitar, snare drum and a pair of metal spoons (YES!) thinking we could entertain ourselves once we got to Canada, but it was time to jam earlier than that. Brain and Dan led the way in the backseat with the Drum/Guitar combo and me and Mark rocked the front with our stellar spoonability and beautifully harmonic singing voices (HA!). We tore through everything we could think of including Lynard Skynard, Eddie Vedder, Cranberries, Everclear, Green Day… It was quite a riot… So naturally, when we hit the Wyoming border in mid-song, we decided to make that our pic for the border… We jumped out of the car and played and sang while our picture timer went off (again set by the mastermind Dan) before being chased away by an angry woman with a broom! Ok… well not quite, but we did think we heard someone so we all ran back to the car and sped across the line.

We drove through Wyoming and into Jackson Hole. We continued north towards Yellowstone, stopping to paparazzi some buffalo hanging out on the side of the road (who then proceeded to snort and threaten to charge the car). Once we arrived at the gate, we saw the sign: “Yellowstone South Gate: CLOSED.” Nooo… that can’t be right… so we pull up to the guard and ask/beg to be let in. No way. Turn around and go back where you came from. Well, that’s not going to happen, but we’ll backtrack a little I guess. So we drove back to Jackson, almost destroyed a pair of elk running across the road, grabbed a bite to eat, filled up the cruiser and headed back to Idaho, slightly disappointed. We also convinced Brian to shave his beard into a nice handlebar mustache which provided entertainment for at least an hour. At this point, Dan took over driving for a bit so that I could get some work done – which was incredibly interesting because he’d never driven on this side of the road before. I gave him the quick and easy Abbey’s guide to driving on the RIGHT side of the road (double meaning intended) and he mastered it in no time. We switched back near Idaho City and proceeded north to Montana.

Except, suddenly, we were in Montana with no warning. We never saw a sign, never a change in scenery, nothing. So we turned around… we were not about to miss a state sign. But… there wasn’t one! Lame Montana doesn’t have a state Welcome sign – which is lame. Apparently there is some sort of visitor welcome center like 65 miles into the state, but we couldn’t find that either… Anyway, right near where the border was supposed to be, there is this tiny little ghost town that we had to check out. There were tons of rundown buildings and houses and it looked very old timey. That’s about all we saw in Montana. It got dark about half way through and we hadn’t even hit a city yet. We picked up some McDonalds again and spent the next couple hours reading Brian’s entire Joke book (with multiple impromptu jokes thrown in by Mark – how do you guys remember all those things?!) and a couple sweet riddles that occupied my time for quite a long time.

Taking our last stop in the states, we’re stretching and whatnot and a cop pulls up behind us to check and make sure we’re not broken down. After he hears us speak with our four radically different accents, he wants to stick around and chit chat, so we let him. Real people and real air. I’ve gotten so used to LA, I’ve forgotten what it’s like.

Salt Lake City, UT --> Kalispell, MT
Miles travelled: 879
Time travelled: 20 hours

XOXO

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