What is backpacking, really?

Day 44

We wake up at Linny’s house and head to the market for some sticky buns covered in pecans, and another of Linny’s truffles (lime instead of raspberry this time). We say our goodbyes to our newfound Canadian friends, anxiously awaiting the meeting of our next friends down in Winlaw. The drive isn’t far and it’s still fairly early, so we drive down to a park in Winlaw that has some picnic tables and swings right next to the river. It’s quite hot in the sun, but the water is prohibitively cold, so we don’t swim. Instead, we bask in the sun (and quickly move to the shade) to play cards and do some writing (independently). After we hang out for long enough we head back into town (which is exactly 6 buildings) to call up Barry and see when we might be able to stop by. I use a pay-phone since our cell phones don’t work, and since I get their machine I tell them that we’re at the cafe in town if they want to stop by, otherwise we’ll go for a walk and call them back later if they don’t leave a message at the cafe for us. It’s a long and complicated message with a lot of “uhs,” which Micah finds charming and makes me self-conscious. They don’t show up, so we go for a walk along the river for several miles and come back. We go to the cafe. No message. Micah calls (I didn’t want to because of the self-conscious thing I just mentioned five sentences ago), but again no one picks up. As much as we want to see Barry and hang out with some more locals, we want to keep moving, and who knows if he’d ever answer the phone. I feel like both parties missed out on a great opportunity to let us drink their water, take a shower in their bathroom, and do laundry at their house. What a loss.

Nelson ends up being our next stop. Nelson = Sebastopol x Canada + (More Drugs x Younger People) + A Lake. And it just so happened that a street faire was going on that night with much music and crafting, and a lot of young people. But the young people came in two varieties: 1) Younger than Micah and me, maybe like 16-19, and 2) The same age as us with kids. There were no exceptions. Apparently this is also a place that many Californians migrate to because it’s so much like California.

Fun fact: had we camped near Nelson we were told that you need to put chicken wire around your parked vehicle or porcupines will eat your tires and breaks. What the hell? To clarify, they eat anything rubber or plastic. Turns out porcupines are quite stupid. I still want to see one though. We later found out from a couple of great guys in Montana - Mike and Don, who will appear later on - that you never, never tell border guards you are going to Nelson because of it’s association with hippies and drugs. It’s legal to have 4 ounces of marijuana there so there’s an immediate assumption that everyone going there is going there for a very specific reason. Good lesson.

Day 45

Upon the recommendation of an employee of an ourdoorsy type store, we decide to backpack out at Christina Lake, which is southwest of Nelson about an hour. It prides itself on being the warmest lake in British Columbia, which, upon touching the water, proves that there are in fact no warm lakes in British Columbia. We arrive, and Micah’s not feeling all that well (probably the beer and pizza from Nelson interacting with prejudiced body energy that repels all things delicious), so instead of hiking out right away we go swimming. A wise choice. It saves us from leaving in the heat of the day, and plus it’s one of the only times this trip when it’s been warm enough to swim comfortably.

After a swim we hike. And the hike isn’t all that bad. The first part is straight up about 1000 feet, but then it levels off and we have a beautiful stroll up above the lake for a few miles. Then, fortunately and unfortunately, we go down to our campsite by the lake. Fortunately because it’s down by the water. Unfortunately because the hill down is a steep mother f’er.

The site is beautiful, but we’re not exactly remote. Like, there are speed boats going by constantly. Plus, we have the misfortune of having some lame asses park their boat in front of our campsite and stay the night. For most of the evening they let their dog roam around land (our land!) while they sat in their boat and drank wine. Lame.

Day 46

Christina Lake, part II. We spend the entire day swimming, relaxing, eating some variety of dried food, and building campfires. It’s a pretty sweet day, but at the end of the day, just like the day prior, guests arrive. This time though, they’re some friendly Canadians in kayaks who agree that you’ll find rednecks everywhere you go. We hang out with them during the sunset, which was amazing because it looked like the sky was on fire, and chatted about life in Canada. They claim that BC stands for Bring Cash based on the fact that everything’s expensive, and that every time they need to go to Vancouver (they live in Victoria), that it costs them $100 for the ferry. They were nice, and a lot more respectful than the other guests we had (and who, I am now remembering, had a boat of their own guests come, and one of them told the original rude couple to feed those “hippie backpackers” to their dog. I wanted to throw feces at them.). But it was still a great day of nice weather and fun in the water.

Day 47

Christina Lake, part III. Instead of lazing around our campsite all day, we hike to the other end of the lake (sans backpacks) to explore the area. It’s all quite lovely, but at the same time it’s all quite the same. At the other end of the lake we went swimming to cool off after the hike, and there was a boat nearby blasting lame American hardcore rock. We planned on being out here for 7 days, but it’s looking less and less likely that we have any desire to stay that long. The clincher comes around dinner time when we run out of propane for the cook stove. No oatmeal for breakfast? See ya.

Day 48

Christina Lake, part IV. We have peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, take one last swim in the lake (which isn’t our last swim in the lake), and hike out. It’s not a very hard hike with our packs lighter, but that doesn’t stop us from going for one last swim (this time for real) in the lake when we get back to the van covered in soaking, sweaty clothes.

As we drive out, trying to determine where to go next, we stop for the all-American meal: Burger, fries, root beer float. The burger is veggie, so we cheated slightly, but man was that satisfying. Micah felt terrible for days, but there’s no denying the brilliance of a root beer float.

The decision: leave Canada. And not a moment too soon either. After a much easier border crossing back into the states, I learned one of those life lessons I always heard about. And the lesson? Whenever your smart uncle tells you to check the belts, you should check the belts before you break down in front of some Montananite’s house where you need to use their phone because there’s no cell reception anywhere but in the center lane of the highway and you have to wait until AAA gets there and takes you to a little podunk repair shop that may or may not have any parts that you might need and you’re stuck there for possibly forever. Only some of that happened, and on the bright side the people there were super nice, and they brought us some beers while we waited for AAA. The hotel we had to stay at was expensive for how crappy it was, but it did have both a shower and a TV, so that was awesome. (Creepy side note: the kid behind the counter has the same last name as Micah, meaning she might be related to the kind of people you would normally associate with Montana - Troy specifically. Troy’s motto: low on elevation, high on recreation. Someone else told us it was the dumbest section of Montana. Nice people though.)

Day 49

I call D’s Shop (because apparently it is d’ only shop in town) and tell him what’s wrong with the van and he says “OK. Three things. Number one, I don’t work on VWs. Number two, I’m booked until a week and a half from now. Number three, I might not have the parts you need. But bring it in and we’ll see what we can do.” Turns out Bob is a nice guy, and within a few hours we’re back on the road in tip top shape. (Next time I’ll check the belts!). We drive through some towns, load up on essentials, and head to Glacier National Park.We get there in the evening, so we don’t have time to do much, but we get a campsite, and head out to McDonald Lake, which is quite nice, and quite cold. And, uh, I think that’s pretty much it. More Glacier the tomorrow!

Day 50

Glacier is an interesting place. It’s pretty awesome in terms of mountains and views and diversity of landscape. It’s also a bitch to get through by car. There’s one road - Going-to-the-sun-road - which takes about 2 hours to drive through. And it’s totally worth it. The views of the landscape are spectacular, and it would take a very long time to see it all by foot. However, the traffic is nuts, and there was also road work with like 20-30 minute delays. Also, StarVan (I think I’ve decided that’s the best name for it since it is made of the strongest steel and turns left with ease) doesn’t particularly like going up really steep hills at a very stop and go pace. So we had lunch when it seemed to be overheating slightly. Overall, the drive was more like 3.5 hours to go 50 miles, so yeah, beautiful and slow.

We also got a back-country permit to go backpacking the next night out at Cracker Lake. But in the meantime we got a campsite at Rising Sun, and then drove to Sun Point to hike around St. Mary’s Lake and out to Virginia Falls. It was all quite lovely, and the weather (though not great) held up long enough for the hike. At the campsite there was entertainment in the form of songs and acoustic guitar, which we skipped. Thank god. Instead we played cards and had beer and chips (both potato and corn with salsa), and then had dinner (burritos), and went to bed.

Day 51

During the night there was a thunderstorm, which was awesome to sleep through, but not so awesome the next day when it was still overcast and gloomy. But we were optimistic and drove to the parking lot that housed the starting point for the trail to Cracker Lake. And then we got there. And our optimism was shattered. It was freezing as hell, windy as shit, and rainy as fuck. And we left. We were both very sad to not be able to backpack in Glacier, but it wouldn’t have been that fun anyway since the fog/clouds were hiding all the views and mountains anyway. Ah, well. Another time.

Next stop: south somewhere. We drove through a small town, Choteau, and did laundry and drank cold drinks before driving down into Helena, which was pretty big. We had a couple of potential campsites lined up outside of town, and so we drove on our merry little way, forgetting (perhaps intentionally) that it was nearing the fourth of July. Campsite #1: full. Campsite #2: full. Campsite #3: closed? Campsite #4: no such thing. We were stuck in Helena with no campsites, and about 1.5 hours of daylight at the most. We’d been driving almost all day and neither of us wanted to go further south to more campgrounds that could also be full so we did what we typically do in cities: drive to a park, cook dinner, and then find a place on the street to park. EXCEPT this time, the park - for reasons we could not understand - was allowing camping for $10 a night in the parking lot. Praise jesus! We later found out that camping was going on because there was a baseball tournament for ages like 8-16 in which hundreds of crazy parents in huge trucks or SUVs sat in their cars and watched little kids playing baseball while honking their horns and screaming things that none of the kids could have possibly heard from that distance. Quite a spectacle. But the night was incredible. We had an amazing view of plains into hills into mountains. The whole area is beautiful. I loved the open land. You can probably see for like 200 miles. The big sky state indeed.

Day 52

Good night’s sleep? Not especially. Trains went by like every half hour, and once 6:30 rolled around there were hordes of people playing, warming up for, or watching baseball. And yelling (“We’re so fired up! Say we’re so fired up!”). Can’t forget the yelling. After breakfast we went to a coffee shop to take care of business (both in terms of using the internet for important matters and me clogging the toilet). After all essentials are done, we head back to the van. Dead battery! Drat! My fridge is supposed to pull only from the auxiliary battery, but something went haywire and everything died. Oops. After getting tired of waiting for AAA, who were taking their sweet time, I tried flagging down some people for a jump. But I had little success. In the meantime, Micah was sitting in the van, and someone parked next to us and gave us a jump after she asked politely. Some people have all the luck.

Back on the road we wanted to find a real campsite, and managed to find a sweet one right by a river teeming with swarms of mosquitos. But I survived by never ever leaving the van. Ever.