Day 21 - Traffic Mayhem
Trip Start
Jun 29, 2007
1
21
27
Trip End
Jul 30, 2007
Canmore, Alberta, Canada
Friday, July 20, 2007
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006908
Note that in the description at the bottom there is mention of the 16.7 km tunnel that is carved through the mountain there to reduce the grade for westbound trains.
Everything was going along fine until we got to Golden, BC. In Golden we were told that the Trans Canada Highway was closed between us and our destination. We were diverted onto another series of roads through Radium Hot Springs which worked out to be about 130 miles (yes, miles) out of our way. There went our hopes of getting into the Banff area around 2:00 pm. Well, what could we do? There aren't a whole lot of other roads that run through these mountains. We headed out from Golden and things went well until we were about 8 km from Radium Hot Springs. All of us Trans Canada Highway travelers came to a halt and then police car came racing up the line up of cars and whizzed past us. An ambulance came by shortly after. By this time we had all turned off our engines and then the word came to us that we would be sitting there for about 4 hours. There had been an accident just north of Radium Hot Springs and our road was closed as well. What to do, what to do? We could turn around and backtrack 70 miles to Golden and wait for the Trans Canada to open or we could sit there. Because of the mountains, our radio information was not happening so we decided, along with many, many other cars and trucks, to sit there. Out came the lawn chairs and we all got comfortable. Luckily, the weather was great and we just lounged around. I had a little power nap and that was a good thing. About three hours later we started moving slowly toward Radium. We arrived at the accident site about 6 km down the road and it was a sorry scene. It looked like there had been an attempt to pass a truck climbing a grade on a corner and a near head on collision had occurred. It was a sobering site to see a large tractor trailer on it's side in the ditch, a new Blazer with severe front end damage and a new Toyota sedan that was severely damaged and forced into a retaining wall along a high embankment. The rescue workers had cut the entire roof off the Toyota and the front seats and center console were covered in blood. It really gave us the creeps and had stupidity written all over it. You see, since we have been diverted off the Trans Canada onto a secondary highway there were all kinds of idiotic drivers passing in the worst of spots. It was a useless thing to do because the line up of cars stretched out as far as you could see. What could that hope to accomplish?? It looked like that's what happened in traffic coming the other way. Wendi mentioned that if we had been there four or five minutes earlier it could have been us in the accident. This really reinforced our belief that things happen for a reason and we have very little to say in how things unfold.
Anyway, by this time it was a quarter to six. We were underway now and heading through Kootany National Park in the dusk. There were deer all over the place standing on the side of road and just of the road in the bush. We passed by a van parked on the shoulder the same as our's with its windshield caved in from hitting a deer. It was a tense drive because we were half expecting these deer to jump onto the road at anytime and we weren't familiar with the road at all. Our hopes of camping were dashed at this time so we booked into a motel in Canmore, Alberta.
After dinner at Boston Pizza we went back to our room to plan, oops, re-plan tomorrow's activities.
A very long, long day indeed.
