Day 26 – Drive to Lake Louise

705 Miles

On the road again…

Without stops, it’s a twelve hour drive. But you know by now that we’re the kind of family that stops.

On June 30, 2019, we left Val and Donovan’s house in Portland at roughly 8:30 am. At the top of the page, you can see the route we took. I-84 follows the Columbia River for hours, and honestly, it didn’t seem long enough. The gorge is stunningly beautiful, with the wide, winding river flanked by rolling green hills one moment and steep, black basalt cliffs the next. It was a struggle not to stop every fifteen minutes for photos. 

Eventually, one thing showed up on our map that we absolutely had to see. About two hours east of Portland, we crossed the Columbia River at Biggs Junction, then followed the Lewis and Clark highway (now officially just inside Washington state) for about five minutes to Stonehenge. 

Yeah, you read right.

It’s actually a Stonehenge memorial — a full-scale replica of how its namesake might have looked 4000 years ago — which was erected to honor thirteen local young men who died in England during World War One. Completed and dedicated in 1929, it is a curious sight out in the far west end of the U.S.A. Yet, because of its location and significance, it quickly becomes a place for serious reflection. What started as a silly, “Can you believe someone built this?” moment became something we are really glad we stopped to see. Still, I had to play “Stonehenge” by Ylvis at full volume in the car. (Warning: Explicit lyrics and mild sexual content, but funny as hell.)

After visiting Stonehenge, we crossed back to the Oregon side of the river and continued for several more hours until we reached Spokane, where another good friend from high school, Shauna, met us with her partner Laurie for a quick coffee. It would have been fun to stay and catch up some more, but we needed to keep going if we had any hope of making it to our hotel in the Canadian Rockies by midnight.

East into Idaho, then north on highway 95, past the unincorporated town of Good Grief, Idaho, we made it to the Eastport/Kingsgate border crossing at about 6:30 pm. The nice customs official in Canada asked us a few questions and waved us through. 

We had done it! We had driven from Naples, Florida to the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles, then all the way north to British Columbia, Canada. Excited, we pulled over just on the other side of the border to take pictures. A man suddenly appeared to hand us each our “required hockey gear”, then vanished again into the woods. Who knew?

It was after 8:30 when we stopped for dinner at a Canadian Burger King, which is just like an American Burger King but harder to eat, what with the hockey mask and all.

As we steadily climbed into the mountains, beautiful landscapes forced us to stop for pictures, which we were fortunate to take until at least 10 pm, as the sun had yet to set this far north. In fact, as we were rounding the final curves, and the temperature dropped to a chilly forty-two degrees, there was still a small bit of light in the west, even at 11:40 pm.

Exhausted, we checked in (after they found our reservation — there was a problem, because we needed a longer day). It was now officially July 1 – Canada Day!