BANFF, CANADA – The way the sun gilded the emerald waters seemed like a beckoning from the great beyond – that increasingly remote space outside our expanding electronic bubbles.
It was the peak of summer, amid another draining heat wave, when I was loafing online and happened on a website featuring this idyllic image of snow-capped mountains and bright flowers ringing what looked like a secluded lake in a kind of alpine, sun-splashed utopia. I had no idea where it was, but I knew I had to go there.
That night, after a few minutes of research, I learned the placid lake was in the Canadian Rockies. The next day, my fiancée Jessica and I booked tickets to fly there a few weeks later.
“We need this,” she said, as the open windows of our apartment made it warmer inside.
It would be a 10 day break from the heat– in fact, there would be nights when it was so cold we wrapped ourselves in multiple sleeping bags – that took us across 1,800 miles, to peaks higher than 6,500 feet, through seven national parks, two time zones, and more glacier-fed lakes than we could have imagined.
Our trip began in late August with a cross-country flight from Boston to Spokane, Wash., where we arrived well after midnight our time, rented a car, loaded our camping gear, and drove an hour east to the Idaho border. We spent the night at a crowded campground, with freight trains running past every hour, but sleep wasn’t the priority.
We were out early, if groggy, for our first stop: Coeur d’Alene, an old mining city beside a large lake in northern Idaho. We stopped at a bed and breakfast and warmed up over organic tea, homemade, fruit-covered waffles, and apple slices glazed in a cinnamon sauce, a meal we savored over the coming days as we lived mainly on gorp. Afterward, we drove around a well-appointed downtown, stocked up on supplies, and took Interstate 90 east to Montana, leaving Pacific time for Mountain time.
It felt liberating to cruise at 75 mph along a highway with one of the nation’s highest speed limits – until we got a speeding ticket. (The irony meant nothing to the police officer, who cited us a few minutes after we exited the highway, with too much exuberance, perhaps.) We drove more carefully over the next four hours as the road wound across rolling hills, beside large lakes, and through small towns with wineries, hot springs, and shops offering more permutations of buffalo jerky than I thought possible. Before dusk, we made it to Whitefish, a century-old station on the Great Northern Railway that has become a stop for legions of tourists on their way to the nearby Glacier National Park, where we were headed.
As we ate at a restaurant in a downtown that looks like it was plucked from the set of an old Western, the air outside cooled and dark clouds filled the sky. By the time we made it to the car, thunder claps seemed to shake the surrounding mountains and it appeared we had entered a monsoon. It didn’t feel like the best night for camping.
We debated whether to skip our reservation at a campground in Glacier, but as we rolled through the driving rain and called nearby inns listed in our guidebook, we found few options. Despite a gloomy forecast, we decided to stick with the plan. We passed through the western gates of the park, where signs warned that we were in bear country, and found our lakeside campground. There would be no fire or Smores; we set up our tent in the rain, using our car’s headlights, and wrapped ourselves in multiple layers for the night.
By the next morning, the rain had given way to a drizzle, and despite the low clouds and thick fog, we witnessed the crystal grandeur of Lake McDonald, the park’s largest lake, where a rainbow of colorful rocks glinted like jewels from below the clear water.
After buying a canister of bear spray, which looked like a fire extinguisher loaded with potent chemicals, we spent the next few days hiking in raincoats along muddy trails shaded by towering cedar and pine trees. We followed the meandering Going-to-the-Sun Road, passing waterfalls and rapid-filled rivers, as it climbed up to Logan Pass, the park’s highest drivable point, where patches of snow covered the mossy earth and we came upon a waterlogged bear lolling about on the road. The shaggy predator looked at us with little interest as we drove by slowly and waved.
As the sun finally broke through the clouds, we got our first glimpse of the jagged peaks that give the Rockies their name and the remnants of the vast tracts of ice that give the park its name. (There are now only 25 glaciers left that are larger than 25 acres, down from 150 recorded in 1850, and those that remain are meager relics. If the planet warms at current rates, scientists expect the park’s glaciers will disappear within 20 years.) We hiked to the top of several mountains, at one point trudging knee-deep through snow while wearing shorts. We passed bighorn sheep and ospreys and kept a hand on the bear spray as we crossed berry-filled trails with fresh scat. Bears, we learned, thrive on berries.
After three days in Glacier, we drove north and crossed a lonely checkpoint into Canada to explore Waterton Lakes National Park, which with Glacier became the world’s first international peace park in 1932. We had hoped to catch a boat across the sapphire-colored lake in the heart of the park, but heavy winds kept the boats moored. So we spent the day climbing a steep trail, passing overfriendly squirrels and a less gregarious elk, until we came upon a pristine lake in a clearing near the summit. As we hiked down, a large double rainbow arced over Waterton Lake, forming something of a halo over the Prince of Wales Hotel, an elegant 83-year-old chalet on a bluff where we later sipped hot chocolate during high tea.
That night, under an oversized moon, we drove north toward Calgary. We stopped to camp in a small town on the outskirts of the big city, and the next morning, we did a quick tour of the glass towers and enclosed walkways of a downtown burgeoned by the local oil industry. Then we headed west for the reason we came.
We drove across vast prairie lands and through rolling hills until we were again back among the soaring peaks of the Rockies. The weather was different from the city, colder and stormier, and a bank of clouds hung over the mountain-etched horizon like a fedora, lending it a certain mystery.
Yet when we arrived we discovered something familiar. Unlike American national parks, those in Canada often have cities at their center, which is where our trip to Banff National Park began, in the town of Banff, which has thousands of residents and everything from large buildings and luxury hotels to a Starbucks and Thai restaurant.
We spent the day hiking on the periphery of town, along one well-beaten trail suspended over several miles on the side of a deep canyon. It took us through a series of increasingly large waterfalls, with the tallest cascading nearly 100 feet into a translucent pool, to a host of small springs called ink pots, where we watched a steady stream of bubbles rise through the turquoise water. That night, we soaked our swollen feet in swimming pool-styled hot springs, which like too many things in Banff in the summer was crowded with tourists.
Still, it was easy enough to separate from the throngs, which we soon found in an empty campground far from town, where the only lights came a canopy of stars that looked like sparklers shooting through the darkness.
The next day we drove north to find that virtual oasis I came upon on the Web. We first had to pass through another urban center and park in a crowded lot. When we found the lake, its gentle waves splashed the shores of another fancy hotel, and unlike the cropped photo, a beatific scene that seemed to promise a sweet solitude, the milky jade waters seemed to attract as many tourists as Niagara Falls.
And for good reason. At the bottom of a large bowl sculpted by moving glaciers, with pine-robed mountains all around, Lake Louise was even more impressive than the post card picture I had seen online. No matter how many people walked along its rocky banks, the cool breeze washing over the still waters oozed a soft serenity.
After hiking to the base of a nearby glacier, passing smaller, similarly colored lakes in the mountains above, we drove a short distance to Moraine Lake, Louise’s little sister, which once graced the back of Canada’s $20 bill. Similarly set at the bottom of rocky, snow-topped peaks, Moraine’s cobalt waters mirrored the cloudless sky, making the light at sunset seem to float as it sparkled.
It was hard to leave such splendor, but there were more sights to see as we drove further north on the Icefields Parkway into Jasper National Park. At one point along the 150 mile drive, where we watched one massive glacier melt before our eyes and glimpsed the breath of the Rockies as they cut through the clouds as far as we could see, I had enough of gazing from afar.
I wanted a more immersive experience.
When we approached yet another inviting lake, I decided to heed its call. The sun was shining and the water, of course, looked just right. After a few moments of wavering, I leapt off a small cliff and glided into the stinging cold of the bright blue water, every pore of my body screaming with delighted terror. It was a short but quenching swim.
We spent the last few days taking the long way back to Spokane, passing through Yoho, Canada’s Glacier, and Mount Revelstoke national parks. We left the highway for back roads, at one point boarding a ferry to cross a river. We visited a farmer’s market where we ate Indian food and drove miles down an unpaved road to find a hidden, riverside commune built around natural hot springs.
As dusk fell on our last night, we began to worry that our meandering would leave us stranded, unable to cross the border. Some border posts in the area close shortly after nightfall.
In the end, the one we chose remained open and we cruised through the night back into a land where distance seemed longer measured in miles than kilometers.
Near midnight, a few hours before our flight back, we filled up for the last time, returned the car, and checked into a hotel near the airport. We took long showers – savoring the heat after so many frigid nights – and discovered our phones and Internet connections were working again.
In the warmth of the climate-controlled room, back with our glowing gadgets, it was comforting to know the world remains more vibrant than the simulacrum of pixels on a computer screen.
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.
