Bye Bye Canada, Hello (Again) USA

Bye Bye Canada, Hello (Again) USA

August – September 2026 ..

Having spent three weeks in the UK celebrating Dave’s Mum’s birthday, we returned to find Big Bertha fit and well. Although, a couple of unwanted guests had set up home in the driving cab (more on that later). First stop was to visit Alberta Upholstery to pick up our sofa cushions which had been reupholstered whilst we were away. Greg did a really good job and we were very pleased with the results. Here is the sofa before and after:

Leaving Calgary, we headed back up into the Rockies having seen that the smoke (from forest fires) had cleared. After an overnight stay at Lake Louise overflow camping, we parked up at the railway station and hiked up to Lake Louise through the woods (no RVs are allowed up to the lake parking lot). Once there, we joined the throngs and hiked up the shore of the lake to the far end, where Francine made friends with a couple of chipmunks.

From Lake Louise we we made our way over Kicking Horse Pass and stopped overnight at the Monarch campground for a second time (we met Ursula and Anneke there before). The next day we continued east through Golden to Revelstoke where we camped at the Begbie Falls. The next morning we hiked down to the falls and the lake beyond, which was quite beautiful, as there was low cloud over the water. In the afternoon we followed the west shoreline of the Columbia River south and crossed it on the Shelter Bay ferry to continue down the east shoreline until we found a rest area with a pleasant waterfall to camp overnight.

The next morning we found evidence of our visitor in the cab – nibbled tissues and a hole in our bag of liquorice allsorts! Mice can be a big problem in motorhomes as they are known to chew through cables (along with everything else!) and that would be a disaster. So we immediately called in at the next town, Nakusp, and bought mouse traps and peanut butter (a favourite mouse bait). The shopkeeper even offered to rent us her cat if that was unsuccessful! It was a friendly town and we bought some delicious plums from the weekly farmer’s market.

Leaving the river behind at Nakusp, we continued south to Slocan lake and had a brief walk around the Slocan town before leaving the lake behind and joining the Kootenay river which took us to the town of Nelson.

The next day we stopped at Kokanee Creek to watch the salmon swimming up stream. Dave waited around and was rewarded when a bear showed up and caught some fish for his dinner. We had hoped to see this in Alaska or on the West Coast of British Columbia, but were travelling there at the wrong time of year, so Dave was really happy to get this chance to see a bear fishing.

The next day we took the ferry from Balfour to Kootenay Bay across the Kootenay Lake and then followed its eastern shore to Creston. So far we had been unsuccessful in dealing with our uninvited passengers. From Creston we continued east to Pincher Creek stopping to hike at Fairy Creek Falls and visit the Frank Slide interpretation centre. Half a mountain broke away early in the morning on the 29th April 1903, burying the mining town of Frank (which had only been established two years earlier), killing between 70 to 90 people. The interpretation centre gave information about the geological causes of the event, as well as exploring the human stories from the recorded personal accounts of survivors. It wasn’t until we continued our journey, that we saw the extent of the slide rock debris – 1km wide and 425m long, which was left as a reminder.

Pincher’s Creek is the last town before Waterton National Park, the seasonal Canada/US Border Post and home of the best thrift shop we have visited! We met Al, a fellow UK traveller in the carpark and we cooked up a dinner of spare ribs whilst sharing travel stories.

Waterton NP is the Canadian side of the cross-border Peace Park, Glacier NP being the USA side. From Pincher Creek (so named because prospectors lost a set of blacksmith’s “pinchers” (iron pincers) in the creek) we first visited a Bison paddock before entering the park proper. The weather was not at its best, but we did manage a substantial hike to Bertha Falls. The following day we hiked in the other direction to visit the Prince of Wales hotel and the next day we set out for the US border (which did not go quite as planned). Still no sign of our Canadian stowaways. Have they left?

And the video…