Ft. Steele
The restaurant in Skookumchuck wasn't open when I got going,
so I rode on to just before the Wasa turnoff, where I ate at Edith's. While
I was eating, a family of cyclists stopped in. They'd started early (around
5:00) from Ft. Steele and were doing a large circuit from Banff, down Hwy.
40 through Kananaskis Country. [In retrospect, I should
have taken Hwy 40 through Kananaskis Country myself, instead of this route;
I would have already been well on my way to Montana].
The mosquitoes were indeed bad in the Wasa area. I was plagued by them just
stopping for a few seconds to apply sunscreen.
Ft. Steele is similar (on a smaller-scale) to the Shelbourne Museum in New
Hampshire. It is a re-creation of the town of Ft. Steele in 1898.
There were numerous businesses recreated:
 Blacksmith shop |
 Pharmacy |
 Bakery (using wood-fired oven) |
 Excellent baked goods |
 Print shop |
 Schoolhouse |
The print shop brought back memories of my first experience with publishing. In high school, I became quite adept at setting lead type using the California Job Case (shown in picture).
The best meal deal so far in Canada [of
the trip] was a bowl of beef stew and a roll for $4.00 at Ft. Steele.
There were some interesting replicas of water handling structures.
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I enjoyed my stop there, but there was some violent drama during
my visit. Two farm hands were apparently training draft horses to carry
out their instructions while pulling a wagon.
The horses turned right and kept turning right. The man on the
right (in photo), jumped down from the wagon to attempt to guide them back
toward a straight course. They turned even tighter to the right, crushing
the man hard against the wagon and then dragging the heavy wagon over his
inert body. Another visitor (wearing a cowboy hat and boots, he looked like
he knew what he was doing) ran to the injured driver. I ran to the park's
administrative office for help. When I got back to the scene of the violent
accident, the other driver was leading the horses away. He speculated that
perhaps the horse was stung by a bee. He said the injured driver, who was
already gone from the scene, was walking, implying he was okay. To me he
looked dead when the wagon was dragged over him. I'm sure he had some broken
bones.
From Ft. Steele, the Adventure Cycling route took me along the east side
of the Kootenay River. The traffic was light and ride was pleasant, passing
large ranches and grazing cattle with the ever present Canadian Rockies
in the background.
I got so hot that I stopped at a park with a lake and "skinny dipped" until the mosquitoes attacked my head as I swam. The mosquitoes were so bad that I didn't even take the time to get dressed when I finally ran out of the water. I quickly pulled on my bike shorts and jumped into my Shimano shoes taking off at a run on my bike. About a mile later when I outran most of the mosquitoes, I stopped in an open location and donned the rest of my attire.
I then climbed a steep hill to Highway 93 and kept climbing as I headed toward Jaffray to the east. By then the bike thermometer showed 116 degrees (f); 45 degrees (c) again and I drank all my water. In fact for about 10 km (6 miles) I had no water at all and was getting dehydrated, dizzy and desperate. When I reached the Jaffray "exit" I turned, but couldn't find a town or source for water. Finally, I saw a woman in her yard and stopped to ask for directions and beg for water. She obliged with some river water she'd boiled. As I drank it, we talked and her husband came home. He was from Jaffray, she had recently moved there from California to marry him. My photo of them was into the sun, so didn't turn out. If I'd stayed on the highway, I would have reached a pub and some stores, instead I wasted about half an hour and several miles looking for the town.
I stopped at the bar and drank some coke with ice. Revitalized with fluids, I continued on.
Then I climbed quite a bit to the junction town of Elko. I had
a choice to make at Elko: stay on Hwy. 93 south to Whitefish, Montana and
then ride along the south end of Glacier Park on US-2; or, turn north-east
on Hwy 6 and cross the Canadian Rockies again via Crowsnest Pass, angling
my way thereafter toward Cutback, Montana. I was tired and confused, so
I decided to rent a motel room in Elko (there is one motel in Elko--it looks
grubby, but the rooms are nice) and seek input from my daughter (who had
all the maps and the Canadian Cycling Assoc. book of Canadian bicycle routes).
I'd called my friends Bill & Karen (who'd cycled around here) from Skookumchuck
to get their opinions. I decided to wait until Monday morning and call Adventure
Cycling in Missoula, Montana for a definitive answer to my dilemma.
65 miles.
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© Ed Noonan 1996, 1997