Highway 1A

June 1st.

Toronto to Calgary: 3500 km by airplane.

Calgary to Banff: 153km by motorcycle.

I arrived in Calgary’s luggage carousel with bated breath.  Would my boxes arrive in tact, or would I find my helmet bouncing down the conveyor belt?  Fortunately, Calgary’s airport is not Toronto Pearson and luggage arrives reasonably quickly.  (I will leave the Pearson luggage rant to another time.)  The cardboard boxes arrived in tact, although pretty beat up.   The rain they received waiting to load onto the plane in Toronto surely didn’t help either.

So all in all the cardboard box is a pretty decent option but I would try to stretch wrap it yourself before you leave home.

A quick taxi ride brought me from the airport to Calgary Harley Davidson who received and serviced my bike before my arrival.  

It’s actually a pretty nice dealership and you can be quite tempted to buy some nice swag; but I was disciplined enough to hold back – mostly because I didn’t have any spare space to pack more stuff in.  And I need another Harley t-shirt like I need a hole in the head.

Before I left home I worked out a turn-by-turn GPS route to take me out of urban Calgary to the campground in Banff, but via highway 1A, not the more common highway 1 (Trans Canada) route.  I’ve driven the Highway 1 route in the car before, and I would definitely take the 1A again instead.   

There is some nice scenery and some great twisty roads that follow the Bow (?) River between Cochrane and Canmore.  Some stretches of road are a little rough (through the Indian reservation I’m told) but all in all, definitely worth going off the beaten path.

I arrived in Banff a little cold (definitely colder than Calgary) and got to the Tunnel Mountain 1 campground fine.  My fear of bears was reduced a lot when I learned the Tunnel Mountain Campground has a small building with lockers to put any food and toothpaste into, well away from your tent.  I certainly wanted to avoid a 3 am adrenaline rush with a bear in my tent.

Setting up the tent I realized I should have brought a mallet for pounding in the tent stakes.  The ground was as hard as concrete and I proceeded to break two stakes using a rock as a hammer.  Fortunately a couple campers loaned me their mallet and not surprisingly worked much better.  Banff has no shortage of outfitter stores so I was easily able to get replacement stakes as well as a mallet at the dollar store.  Live and learn.

A burger and beer at Eddie’s finished the day well and I’d recommend the place to anyone in Banff looking for grub.

I’m looking forward to a night’s sleep with no alarm clock.  Can’t wait.