The drive North from Schweitzer to Revelstoke
This is off the charts geography
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My apologies for being so tardy in wrapping up the ski season journals. Perhaps you might enjoy them even more now that the season is a couple months past and it is still 6 months plus until the 22/23 season.
Schweitzer is a great surprise. Much more of a mountain than I expected and a very well done small development at the base. Unfortunately the weather forecast calls for rain. Bummer. Time to move on to Canada and Revelstoke. I kept pushing out the required Covid test to enter Canada, not knowing when I would cross the border. There is a healthcare organization called Pan Handle health that coordinates things like a Covid test so I called first thing Monday morning. The process for Canada border crossing recently changed and now they allow a same day test. Unfortunately they don’t give the results until 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon so I will not be making it to Revelstoke today. No worries, I don’t need to be in Golden BC for the backcountry trip until Thursday so plenty of time. There is a free RV dump at the county fairgrounds in Sandpoint so good time to get that done before I have a problem.
The hospital I am headed to for the Covid test is in Bonners Ferry, about 50 miles south of the Canadian border. The test itself took just a few minutes. (Not the one I got 1.5 years ago where they jammed the swab into my nose all the way to my brain stem. Just a quick little swizzle in each nostril.) With a few hours to wait I decided to splurge and have a nice restaurant lunch. There is an Indian casino in town with a big parking lot so that is where I headed. Might be fun to play a little black jack. The casino does have a nice restaurant but the gambling portion was right out of a dystopian future movie. No card tables, just machines. Senior citizens smoking cigarettes and pushing buttons on slot machines. Depressing. But I did have a nice chicken pasta while looking at the Kootenay River.
While driving around I noticed a sign pointing to the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge. (Interesting how the spelling is different from the river, national park, mountains….) Time to explore. It is always a bit nerve wracking going down small roads with the camper, but I’m not going to detach. Good call, the refuge is a gem. Better in the summer since a loop road is closed in the winter but still worth a visit any time of year. The refuge was created because farm lands had removed feeding grounds for the spring and fall migrating birds. It is not quite spring yet but I do see a few colorful hawks in my short visit.
Highlight of the short visit is a 10 minute walk to Myrtle Falls. The path is a bit challenging with mud and ice but worth the effort as you see below:
Back to the hospital to pick up my negative test; now how far north can I get before sunset? I know the scenery will be too good to miss by driving in the dark. After several miles the landscape begins to look more and more like the Canadian Rockies. Wish I had better writing skills to describe what that means to those who have not been to the Canadian Rockies. These are the words that come to mind; Big, scale, grand, humbling. I get excited every time I see it. So inspiring.
The border crossing is Rykerts, but it is later then I was planning. While glancing at Google Maps I notice the crossing is closing at 5. Hmmm…I make it by 4:30. The crossing was uneventful, I resist saying some stupid joke about drugs. (Thirty years ago I did not resist. It was a bad outcome. Don’t ever make stupid drug jokes at a border crossing.) Driving north into Canada I turn west at Creston and now I’m in the heart of the Kootaney Mountains. The passes just go on and on. Not something like the Teton Pass where you are up and over in no time. This is long, constantly up/down left right for hours. Google says 1 hour 45 minutes but it took me much longer with the camper and constant rubber necking. The striking scenery is constant.
It is raining the entire time and I’m so thankful the temperature is mid 30’s. If the temperature dropped 5 degrees I would be in trouble. It would have been snow instead of rain and the road freezing. Dodged a bullet.
My goal was Castlegar and that is where daylight and I was fading fast. After a quick stop in the town to get gas I decide to push on in hopes of a rest stop to spend the night. Fortune smiled and one appears just out of town. In mountain country like this space is at a premium so rest stops are often just a wide spot in the road. This is the case here, good enough. This is the view from the rest stop the next morning.
Now off at first light and on to Revelstoke. Much of the drive today is next to long and narrow dammed rivers like the picture above. Mostly up high looking down on the river, occasionally at the level of the river. Thank goodness there was essentially NO traffic. The roads are narrow and my rubber necking of course continued.
One of the cool and interesting things about roads in this part of Canada are the ferries. Rather than build crazy expensive bridges to cross these long reservoirs they offer ferry service. No charge, part of the road system.
The Ferry crossing
Next up….the Revelstoke ski experience.