Well we're finally back after 2 weeks on the road & 4400 Kms. What a ride. What a trip. The scenery that we rode through can't be described by words or pictures. You just gotta be there. We rode through thunderstorms and lightning in Lolo Pass, to 102F in the desert areas and everything in between.
I have to say the old Fatboy ran like a dream, and even though I make fun of Harley's, I never lost one part on the whole trip. Except I did lose my sweatshirt out of my cargo net on a freeway, and Dave had to stop and retreive it for me.
We had no problems and no close calls and everyone we met were just super friendly to us, and we all got along great.
There was Dave, Mike, Frank and myself, and I must say they were a great bunch of guys to roll with.
Here is a map of our trip.

DAY 1 Monday-July 19/2010


Here is a picture when we were leaving on the trip from Dave's house in Sidney.

Dave with his Road King

Mike and his Suzuki Volusia

Frank and his brand new Goldwing

And me with my trusty steed "92 Fatboy

 

Day 1 continued....
We were heading up to Nanaimo to take the ferry to Horsehoe bay, it would be faster that driving right through Vancouver from Tswassen.
We had to stop at Duncan at this sheepsking shop so dave could get a sheepskin cover for his Road King seat. (prevents monkeybutt).
Well when the lady there made him the cover an put it on it looked sooooo comfortable, that we were telling Dave that he should only wear his chaps with nothing underneath, because that seat was made for freeballing.
We even considered changing our name to the Freeballers MC.
Later on in Revelstoke, a trucker saw his seat and comented that he had ball to ball carpeting. lol

Dave's new seat cover.

We also had to stop here.

We then rode to Nanaimo and took the ferry to Vancouver.

Us in the ferry lineup.
We then headed up the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler and we spent most of the day hanging around in Whistler.
We even got to try out a 3 man bodsled in a store.



It was late when we left Whistler, so we stopped at a campsite up the road a piece.

It had nice facilties, but it wasn't made for tenting. The sites were all kind of crushed gravel & rocks. I think sleeping in a rock quarry would have been more comfortable.
But I got to try out my new Harley Davidson Tent with the zip-on bike garage. It was cool, but I never used the garage part for the rest of the trip.



Didn't get much sleep the first night and I could hardly walk in the morning after sleeping on a rockpile.
contiued .......

 

Day 2 - July 20/2010
We left the campsite at Whister, and headed up hwy 99 through Pemberton, Lillooet & Cache Creek towards Kamloops.
One of the worst roads we have ever ridden on was the highway between Pemberton and Lillooet. It was rough and nothing but potholes. After Lillooet it got better.
We didn't get all the way to Kamloops that day, as we stopped at a Provincial Campsite called Juniper Beach Provincial Park. It was beautitul, the campground was in a valley between the huge rolling hills, and tenting area was soft grass.
What we found out after is that there two sets of train tracks, one on either side of the campground, and trains go by there every half hour or so, and they were loud. The wheels were squeeking so loud it would make your eardrums distort. Since I'm the only one that rides with earplugs, I had the solution. At least I got a good night sleep.
They had showers there sort of like outhouses, and you got 3 minutes of hot water for a loonie. Dave and I decided to go and have a shower, but we only had one loonie each. Well 3 minutes goes by pretty fast, and when that cold water hit, I could hear Dave yelling from his shower outhouse, and I was screaming and gasping for breath, that water was sooooo cold. I guess we didn't realize how much noise we were making, until the manager came over and asked us if everything was ok. We told him why we were yelling, and he started laughing.



Other than the noisey trains it was really nice.

 

Day 3 - July 21/2010
We headed East through Kamloops and took Hwy 1 up to Revelstoke. We had to wait about 3 hours at a gas station in
Revelstoke, along with a bunch of truck drivers, because there was an accident in Rogers Pass and the highway was
closed until they could clean it up.
Just around Shuswap, we got passed by a bunch of Hell's Angels. We were going to stop and have a rumble with them,
but there was 4 of us and only 8 of them, so we thought it wouldn't be fair and we let them go. lol
Actually they waved at us when they went by. They seemed like a nice bunch of lads.
Someone told me they have a houseboat up on the Shuswap and they like to go there and float around now and then.


Here are the Hells Angels a couple of vehicles ahead of us in a road construction delay.

After they finally got the highway open we headed up to Golden. We camped at a campsite there called Sander Lake
Campground. It was nice, but we had to navigate switchbacks on a goat trail with loose gravel to get up there in
the dark. We thought we might get a complaint about our bikes making too much noise late at night, but it turned
out that the owners are bikers too. The owner has a Road King and was away on a road trip but the the caretakers
Johan and Jane who are from the Netherlands are also bikers and have a BMW at home. They were super nice people
and they just couldn't do enough for us.
The only problem, the campsite they gave us was by the lake, and in the morning it turned out the lake was a
slough. No wonder we got eaten alive by mosquitos. lol

The lake beside our campsite.



Putting up our tents in the dark.

Our campsite at Sander Lake

The old Hawg in need of a wash.
All in all it was a nice campsite, and the people were so nice. I would definately camp here again.

 

Day 4 - July 22/2010
Dave wanted to go and visit family in Windermere (between Radium & Fairmont Hotsprings) so he headed south down Hwy 95 and Mike, Frank and I headed east in Hwy 1. We would hook up with Dave later.
Along the way we stopped at Lake Louise & Banff before getting to Calgary.
It rained quite a bit between Banff and Calgary, but we seemed to be able to out-run it. Then whenever we stopped to take pictures, the rain would catch up so we would hi-ball it for a while and the rain would stop, but when we
stopped again for photo ops, the rain would catch us again.
We got into Calgary quite late, and I had to stop and have my obligatory burger at Peter's Drive-in on 16th Ave.
They make the best burgers in the whole world.
Then we found a little bar where we stopped to strap on the feed bag. I guess we dawdled a little too long there,
because when we got to the campground they were closed. So we had to grab motel rooms for the night. That was ok,
as we needed a good night's sleep and a shower anyways.
Lake Louise was beautiful as always. I've been there before, but I'm still awed by the scenery.

 

Day 5 - July 23/2010
Today Mike, Frank and I headed Northeast to Drumheller, Alberta. Frank wanted to see some dinosaur bones.
Drumheller is a very unique place geologically. You are driving accross flat prairie, and then you come to a big hole in the ground like a mini-Grand Canyon, and Drumheller is down in the hole. You can find fossils here, dinosaur bones, petrified stuff, and even sea creature fossils.


Here you can see the flat prairie on the outside, with the hole going down to Drumheller.

We went to the World famous Tyrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller. It is a must-see if you are there.




Sea creature fossills from Alberta.


Dinosaur Eggs found near Milk River Montana. Still had babies in them.





Mike standing beside a dinosaur leg.

Petrified Log

 

Day 5 continued...
While in Drumheller we rode about 10 KMs east to see the HooDoos.
These are weird sandstone formations formed by the wind and rain.

Here are some photos of the HooDoos.





Then we left Drumheller and headed south to find a campsite.
We ended up camping at Macgregor Lake campsite. It was nice, and didn't cost us anything. Bonus!!!!


A beautiful Alberta Sunset.




Did I mention they have bugs in Alberta?

 

Day 6 - July 24/2010

The three of us Mike, Frank and I, left the MacGregor Lake campsite, and we headed back up toward Calgary. Mike had family he wanted to visit for an hour or so, and Frank had to leave us and head back to Victoria. (He only had a week off). I split from them at Okotoks, because I had to go to Canadian Tire to get some stuff, and the GPS said there was one in Okotoks.
The I headed south down to Nanton, AB so I could have a short visit with my sister who lives there. She works in a Grain Elevator converted to a museum. Gone are the days when every prairie hamlet had a grain elevator or two. They are quickly disappearing. There is only about 170 elevators left in Alberta out of 1700. About 10 minutes after I got there, Mike rolls in from Calgary, so my sister gave us the tour of the elevator and explained how everything works. I've lived around these things most of my life, but never even thought about how they work.
About an hour later we got a call from Dave who split off with us two days earlier at Golden to head down to Radium Hot Springs to visit family. He took the south route through the Crow's Nest Pass, and was waiting for us at a Husky service station in Pincher Creek. So Mike and I hit the road and boogied on down to Pincher Creek (took us about an hour) where Dave was having a nap in the shade of a little sort of shed, but we saw his bike parked in front. Now we're back to 3 guys, and Frank was headed home on his Goldwing. We missed having Frank with us, but he had to get back. He rode from Calgary to Victoria in one stretch.
It was windy as hell in Southern Alberta, crosswinds and gusts blowing us all over the road. They have a lot of those Windmill generators down there.


The little shed thing that Dave was having a snooze behind.

Wind Generators in the Pincher Creek area.
We headed south towards Waterton. The scenery was pretty awesome down there.
We rode through a Bison paddock.




This is the Campground we camped at just a few Kms north of Waterton. It was quite nice.

 

Day 7 - July 25/2010
Today we headed south and took a detour into Waterton. That is a nice town. There are deer all over the place right downtown sleeping and grazing on lawns and boulevards. They are very used to people there that they were very tame.





This is the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton. A swanky hotel built in 1926.

This is the view from the front lawn of the hotel. That is the town of Waterton on the right side of the lake.

We had lunch in Waterton, the we headed south and crossed the border into Montana. We entered Glacier National Park and went over Logan Pass also called "Going to the Sun Road". What a ride that was. Most of the road was under construction and single lane. When we reached the summit, there was a visitor center there that we stopped at. We couldn't believe how tame some of the wildlife was.
When they finish the road construction, that will be an amazing bike road.

"Going to the Sun Road". You can see the road faintly on the far mountain.






Here's a Bighorn Sheep walking past my bike.

That night we camped at Kalispell, Montana.
We had to stop at a carwash in Kalispell and wash our bikes.





Supper... mmmmm yummy. At least it was better that the night we all shared a can of tuna using potato chips for spoons. lol

 

Day 7 continued....
Here's a few more photos of "Going to the Sun Road" Summit