In Prince Rupert, Jane filled our previously emptied-out refrigerator with a nice selection of Canadian foods that have labels in French and English and weights & volumes in grams or meters or litermeters or metergrams or some such nonsense. Jane just pulled out a package of spare ribs for John to grill tonight and the grill recipe she found called for two to four pounds of ribs. We have .845 kilograms. While we are trying to figure out how much our food weighs, we can try to learn French. If you bought some “oeufs” (calibre: gros) you need to heed the admonishment: gardner au refrigerateur. Maybe this is partly the reason why Canadians have a funny accent – they aren’t sure if they should be speaking in English, French or Englench.

We are finally heading East on the Yellowhead Highway (16) bound for the beautiful Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks on the border of Alberta and British Columbia. We spent the night at Burns Lake (we are just about the only camper there) and then stop in Valemount the next day. Valemount is in a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains and we are thrilled at the lovely scenery. As a bonus the RV Park (Irvin’s RV Park) is one of the nicest we have been in with large sites, 50 amp electricity and spotless facilities. Our plan was to stay here for a couple of days and then continue on to a campground in Jasper and then drive down the much heralded “Icefields Parkway“, Highway 93 to Banff and then zip over to Calgary. John always keeps a close eye on the weather and it wasn’t looking good in the next few days – in fact they were expecting 10-20 centimetergrams of snow in Jasper and all down the parkway to Banff. A slow moving disturbance west-bound from Edmonton was going to cause quite a bit of distress so early in the season.

We sit for another day watching the weather and wondering if our plans for driving the parkway (and our route for the return to Montana) are going to be feasible. Unable to garner any specific highway information, we decide to drive the Jeep the 70 miles to Jasper and see for ourselves. Much of the traffic we notice coming the opposite direction is covered in snow that slowly has been littering the highway as it falls off. It’s not looking good! We arrive in beautiful Jasper (which looks like it could be a village in the Swiss Alps) and talk to the park rangers and look at a road condition report. The report is for poor winter driving and they are currently plowing and sanding the roads. Ominously, the weather forecast is for more snow. Another bad omen is all of the desirable campsites in the Whistler’s campground (in the park) are full when we checked. We discussed the situation and decide we want no part of driving in snow or melting snow so we give up on our plans to drive through the parks. Our alternate route will add perhaps 200 more miles (or 300 litermetergrams) to our route back to Great Falls, Montana but that is the price for being a snow-wimp.

Our unplanned detour isn’t all bad news because we have the opportunity to drive in a new to us part of British Columbia that contains spectacular scenery – many mountains, rivers, streams, lakes, glaciers, flowers and beautiful little towns and villages. It was indeed a wonderful consolation prize for missing the Icefields Parkway. God has blessed us with great weather and safe travel for our trip back to Montana and ready for other adventures. You dear readers that are still with us will be pleased to know that “oeufs” are eggs.