Girl Meets World on FZ-07 Motorcycle: Chapter 2, Part 13

You know, even though the people were some of the friendliest I've ever encountered and the landscape some of the prettiest, it feels so good to be back on American soil where the gas for my FZ-07 is affordable and my phone has service. There's just something about it that feels like being home, even though I'm way out in Montana nowhere near home in LA, haha. I'm basically fully recovered from crashing , so now seems like a good time to catch up!

After leaving Chetwynd, we headed toward Prince George. We stopped at a spot called Davie Lake (apparently chosen on the basis that Hollywood's actual name is David, and he got excited. Nerd.) off a very rough, sandy, and rocky road, where we set up camp for the night. My aching neck and body and thoroughly bruised thumb really appreciated all of the violent jostling getting in. Le sigh. There wasn't much to do in this spot, but we opted to stay an extra day so I could recover a bit more before heading out. I'll gladly tough out pain to make a race or make it to camp, but there was really no reason to push myself just for the sake of pushing myself. We met a nice couple by the lake who made us food and taught us a thing or two about how real lumberjacks chop wood. You learn the coolest life skills in Canada, haha.

When we finally left, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and it was pouring rain. My freshly crashed jacket and pants proved to be not-quite-so-waterproof anymore, which made for a chilling ride into Prince George. Jaret and Janelle, the couple we met at the campsite, offered us a spot for the night in their camper, so we crashed there to get out of the rain before heading toward Jasper in Alberta.

Another rainy day. As the rain started to get heavier, Hollywood pulled off into a park to take shelter until the storm passed. Given my gear circumstances, I wasn’t compelled to protest (Although if I had been alone, I definitely would have just sucked it up and gone through the storm anyways. Sissy). The rain got heavier and heavier before eventually passing by (So I GUESS it was a good decision to wait it out). After one more camping pitstop outside of McBride, we made our way to Jasper, where the huge crowds of tourists kind of took away from the beauty of it, honestly.

But once we made it out of the main city and down toward the glaciers, my whole perception of the area changed. We camped out on the icefields, huddling by a wood fire stove in a warming hut for much of the night to keep warm. We woke up to a perfectly clear day with a breathtaking view of the Athabasca glacier behind our tent. God, I love Canada. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve woken up to scenes like this that just leave me so completely in awe. And it’s days like this that I can’t imagine doing anything else.

We backtracked a little to hike to the glacier and really see it (It feels really good to hike for real after so many long stretches of sitting all the time), then continued back to BC. We were going to go on to Banff, but the crowds going through Jasper and Lake Louise were just too much of a turn-off to stay much longer in Alberta. I mean, as much as I love people, growing up in Los Angeles has really made me hate crowds, and crowds in nature where it’s supposed to feel like an escape from all that hustle is even worse.

We camped off a logging road by another beautiful BC lake outside Revelstoke then headed toward the ferry to cross into the Kootenays. As we were boarding the ferry, a motorcyclist named Kevin told us about a big seminar for a group called Horizons Unlimited that was being held at the town of Nakusp on the other side of the lake. It was basically a convention of adventure riders all gathering to trade stories and learn more about traveling the world on a motorcycle. Best coincidence ever?

We met up with a bunch of different riders when we stopped in town who invited us to camp with them for the convention. I can’t even put into words how great it felt to be surrounded by hundreds of like-minded people, all tenting it off their motorcycles. While we saw a few people riding up to Alaska, almost all of them had been hopping from hotel to hotel, so this was still surprisingly novel. There were talks of everything from bribery and border crossings to riding on cargo ships to fancy social media campaigning. Some had seen the entire world, some were there trying to figure out how to get started, but everyone was passionate about the journey. We sat in for a few talks, and picked the brains of everyone we could find. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stop after finishing the whole USA after all these stories about South America and Europe and Africa and everything in between!

After a few days of adventure bliss, we moved on with a bit of melancholy and made our way to the nearby ghost town of Sandon- an old silver mining town that housed one of the first AC hydroelectric plants, which had been running without skipping a beat for over 100 years. I always wanted to camp in a ghost town, and the small handful of locals were elated to get to talk about their history. But much like how I still haven’t seen any moose despite going all the way to Alaska and back, I did not see any ghosts despite sleeping in a ghost town. Such a rip-off!

For the last days in BC, we ran through a fantastically twisty road down to Nelson, then backtracked to take the world’s longest free ferry over to Cranbrook. We spent one last night and took one last swim in a BC lake, before making our way to the border outside Eureka, Montana. Project Alaska is officially a success. Next stop: Glacier National Park!