Day Five - Jun 17, 2004

Dawson Creek, B.C. to Radium Hot Springs, BC

High Point: Brian - Finally getting to Radium Hot Springs Theresa - The Jasper to Banff critters

Low Point: Brian - Taking a little detour that added two hours to a long day of driving Theresa - Trying to get the road trip math into Excel, gave her a left brain headache

Miles By Automobile: 626

Miles Total: 2213

Price Per Gallon: 242

Today's Weather: Sunny and in the 70s

Tonight's Lodging: Red Streak Campground

Where Uploaded: Billings, MT

Wildlife: Bears, stone sheep, caribou, elk, long horn sheep, and a couple of dozen deer at dusk

Daily Didactic

We rose promptly at almost nine o'clock and aimed the bus down the Bighorn Highway toward Grand Cache. It was one of those "Really? I didn't think it was that far." days. Having only driven this stretch once before, Brian is pretty comfortable it was shorter last time. The Bighorn Highway runs south from Grand Prairie, to Grand Cache and then on to Hinton. While it is gorgeous and scenic and all of that, it is also almost devoid of signage. No "this many miles" to anything signs. For a nearly three hundred mile road it seems a little odd, that's all we are saying.

From Hinton south is the entrance to Jasper and Banff National Parks and one of our more anticipated stretches of road on this little drive. The geography is amazing techtonic plate crashing together stuff and the wildlife seldom disappoints. We saw a number of bear on the Bighorn Highway and three or four in the parks. We had an incredibly close up Elk sighting and a few more caribou and sheep sitings.

Sadly, as we were about an hour from Radium Hot Springs, Brian talked Theresa into a little road game of "let's input the the mileage into Excel for easier crunching". For those of you who don't know her that well, two of Theresa's favorite things are math and annoying software. An hour later the numbers were in Excel, we couldn't do what we needed because apparently division is installed with some value pack, and we were an hour down the wrong way to Radium. Brian, determined to wake near the crystal blue waters of the Radium Aquacourt, turned around and proceeded the two hours back to Radium, the last half hour of which was spent spotting and being wary of an enormous poulation of roadside deer in the dusk. Brian loves his wife very much.