On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
frosty
We left Minnesota for a six-day trek on the Trans Canada Highway to get to Banff — five days driving and a one-day stopover in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan where we bought groceries and did our laundry. We’ve watched the landscape get more dry and the trees disappear after crossing the 100th Meridian somewhere in Manitoba. We had an overnight stop in Medicine Hat, Alberta with one more day of driving ahead. It was our first time at one of these campgrounds – a Wal-Mart parking lot. This completes our trifecta of boondocking overnights: Truck Stop, Cracker Barrel, and Wal-Mart.
We had an easy time at the border. Remembering a previous visit to Quebec, I looked up the regulations on what to declare and made a list of our cocktail fixin’s, produce, and plants. The crossing was small with just one border officer. He asked the usual questions, looked at my list where I estimated we would owe about $50 duty, then waved us through. Too much paperwork to bother with on a nice day, eh?
Once we got out of the prairie and saw the mountains we thought back … this trip has been on our bucket list for 30 (or maybe 40) years. It’s just as amazing as we’d hoped.
The Trans Canada Highway has been similar to I-70 but not as boring, maybe because we’ve never seen it before. It was surprising to me to see that it’s not all limited access. There are occasional cross streets for local access.
Capone’s Hideaway in Moose Jaw. The town bills itself as “Notorious Moose Jaw.” The notoriety comes from the 1920s, when Canada’s Temperance Laws were in effect, just like the US Prohibition. The city’s seamy side was bootlegging, speakeasies, gambling, and brothels. Al Capone was said to come to town on the Soo Line when things got too hot for him in Chicago. I’m skeptical, weren’t there lots of other places he could have gone instead?
Heading west
Our campsite in Medicine Hat. We arrived around 3:30 and the “campground” filled up over the next few hours. We called ahead, they said overnights were fine, just park out of the way of shoppers and deliveries at the back of the store. We showed our appreciation by buying some groceries.
Our first sight of the Rockies, east of Calgary
About 40 miles from Banff
Somehow putting “Canadian” before “Rockies” makes these mountains more exotic. Forgive the picture quality, they’re from my cell phone through the buggy windshield!
Canadian Rockies
Ramalama
nice photos, bugs on windshield not withstanding.
MagdaInBlack
I am enjoying this series because my parents and I made this very same camping trip in ( i think 1967) except much more leisurely: we took most of the summer to do it, as my parents packed me up when school was out and we didn’t come home til about 2 weeks before school started. My favorite camping spot was near the Columbia Ice fields. Relatively primitive camping and it was gorgeous.
Trip back home to Illinois was thru the northern tier of states.
BretH
Ruler-flat then jagged peaks. Cheers for your adventure!
MagdaInBlack
Also, WGN in Chicago had a tv show “Garfield Goose and Friends” with Frazier Thomas as host, starring a puppet goose, Garfield. Ever winter Grandma Goose would fly in for the winter, from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
Steve in the ATL
So tired of this woke DEI stuff!
Geo Wilcox
@Ramalama: It’s NICE to see bugs on the car window. When we moved out to rural Indiana in 1998 we used to get so many bugs on the car windshield. Now NONE. I never have to clean off my windshield after driving like I used to. That is BAD. Bugs are one o f the biggest links in the food chain and fewer bugs means fewer birds that eat them.
Hoodie
Sounds like a great trip. Recently did a road trip in BC. What struck us is how immense Canada is. We traveled by ferry halfway up the coast and cut across the Chilcotin, but realized there was still an huge amount of the province we still had not seen. The scale of roadless areas is hard to comprehend. I can see why Trump fantasizes about Canada, but a place like that is not something you can own. Fuckers like him view everything on the planet as real estate and miss the point of living.
stinger
These pictures take me right back to my childhood and family trips before school started in the fall, also a slow time for my farmer dad. I feel like I’m there in the car with you!
JoyceCB
Takes me back to my childhood too. Mid-60’s, me and my brother in the back seat of a ’59 Dodge (tail fins!), hauling a 14′ trailer. The first sight of the mountains rising up far across the ranches of Southern Alberta! But I understand the ubiquitous grain elevators have nearly all disappeared.
Trivia Man
Nice.
Glacier was on our bucket list, hit it last year as our 30th anniversary treat. Because of health issues we did a guided package tour on a bus. Glacier, Banff, Waterton… that circuit. Amazing, wish wed been able to do it the old fashioned way and linger some places at our discretion.
WaterGirl
Wow, thanks for this set of three, frosty!
frosty
@Geo Wilcox:
There were a few bugs but you’re right: there were a lot more when I was younger and it’s an ecological problem that pesticides are killing them off.
frosty
@Trivia Man: In the next few days (weeks) ‘ll be sending WaterGirl posts for all three: Banff, Glacier, and Waterton. Stay tuned!
frosty
I missed replying to comments on yesterday’s post but I went back and did it today if anyone is interested.
Ol_Froth
When I was 10 my parents took me and my sisters on a summer long camping trip up through Michigan, into Canada, across to Vancouver, and then down to LA before heading back east to Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, I was too young to appreciate it. The lasting memory though, was hiding in the bathroom in a Banff campground while a grizzly bear and black bear fought in the middle of the campground. Both had wandered in looking for food when the grizzly decided to go after the black bear’s cubs. The black bear wound up winning after the grizzly got a paw stuck in an empty coffee can. The rangers were then able to dart the grizz and remove it. When we got back to our tent, there were claw mark tears in the screened section. After that, we stayed in motels for the rest of the trip.
Doug R
It’s 4 lanes or better all the way through Alberta, Saskatchewan and most of Manitoba. Then in Northern Ontario, it’s back to the 2 lanes except for the occasional new stretch I hear. Just not up there in Ontario’s priorities.
British Columbia is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade-it’s freeway from Kamloops to Vancouver but there’s 400 km east of Kamloops that still needs work.
They just spent over $600 million to widen and straighten the worst major highway in BC, the infamous Kicking Horse Pass.
13 bridges and viaducts in 4.8 km of road.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation-projects/highway1-kamloops-alberta
frosty
@Doug R: The two-lane Kamloops section is why we headed south instead of west after Banff. We’re *done* pulling a trailer on a two-lane road through the mountains and watching the traffic get backed up behind us.
mvr
Thank you for this.
I hitch hiked that route and then on to Calgary and then the Dakotas (also home to Illinois like MagdaInBlack) in 1977 after checking out Reed College after I dropped out of the University of Illinois. I remember bedding down between the two sides of a divided highway after dark and waking up to mountains in the morning. Very impressive. Hope to go back some day (we made it to Glacier last Fall) but probably not by hitch hiking.
Thanks again!
cope
@MagdaInBlack: My uncle was working for WGN in those days, selling ad time. He took me and my sister to the set of one of the shows once, not sure which one but it wasn’t Bozo’s Circus
ETA: Sorry, I meant to first complement frosty on the pictures and story. Reminiscent to me of our summer family trips from Illinois to the west on, usually, I-80.
Another Scott
I’ve driven from YYZ (4:55) to Banff several times for conferences. It’s an impressive drive once one gets away from Calgary.
I think the last picture is Mount Rundle. It’s an impressive peak. There’s a nice hike on it. I haven’t done the whole thing – the trail gets very narrow at one exposed point and it’s a good place to turn around. ;-)
Thanks for the pictures and the memories!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Xavier
We stopped in Banff, but found it too crowded for comfort. We eventually made it over the Rockies to Golden, BC, which featured a municipal campground by the river, and a delightful and uncrowded downtown area.
Thor Heyerdahl
The Icefields Parkway between Lake Louise and Jasper is an impressive drive without any heavy commercial traffic. I stayed a night at a “wilderness hostel” where they had a separate building that you kept your toiletries in – in case of bears being attracted to the scent. The night sky was amazing and it was so silent the only noise was that sound you get in your own head.
A stop at the Columbia Icefield is sobering because the retreat of the glacier has been marked out, showing the late 1800s until today. It’s at least 500 meters in the last 50 years. Global warming deniers can kiss my ass.
frosty
@Thor Heyerdahl:
Lake Louise and Icefields Parkway are coming up soon. We didn’t make it to Jasper but that’s on our bucket list for 2026.
munira
I’ve driven across Canada several times – all the way from Quebec to B.C. and it’s always exciting when the Rockies first appear.
KrackenJack
There was a sign on an otherwise nondescript rise between Calgary and Canmore declaring a spot by the Scott Lake Hill rest stop as the highest point on the on Hwy 1 east of the Rockies.
I took a picture of it while I was working up there back in 2009. Can’t locate the pic at the moment, but apparently it is the second highest point overall at 1400m. Kicking Horse Pass is 200m higher. The other mountain passes are 100 – 200m lower.
Betty
The Canadian Rockies do look majestic in your photos.