The Route

I flew with Canada 3000 from Amsterdam to Toronto. Once I arrived in Toronto the border formalities where easier than I expected, and when I had picked up my luggage I went into the bus and the subway towards the Greyhound terminal on Bay-street. I arrived there around 8'oclock and because my bus to Winnipeg didn't leave until midnight I had plenty of time to get my Greyhound Canada Pass and to buy something to bite on during the 1 1/2 day trip. The Canada pass allowed me free travel whenever and wherever I wanted on the coaches of Greyhound Canada and several other companies. The pass wasn't cheap, but it was worth it's money; I travelled about 170 hours by bus during the four  weeks  I was in Canada. I arrived in Winnipeg somewhere in the early morning of the second day, and the first thing I wanted was of course some good breakfast and some coffee. After my breakfast I went exploring the city, I went to two museums: The aviation-museum near the airport and the museum of Man & Nature which had some interesting exhibits about the early inhabitants and the exploration of Manitoba. Outside the museums it was so hot that the only thing I could do was walking inside shopping malls and other places with air-conditioning. In the evening I went again to the bus terminal and took the bus to Edmonton where I wanted to visit the world's largest shopping mall. But when I visited the West-Edmonton Mall I was a bit disappointed, you'd expect that the world's largest shopping mall would sell nearly everything you can imagine, but in fact it was just several times the same shops. That's also a way to fill a shopping mall. But after all it was the first shopping mall I've ever seen with an amusement park and submarines inside. 

After I'd seen two large cities it was about time to see some of Canada's gorgeous nature, so I went to Jasper in the Rocky Mountains where I stood at the Whistler's campground which was a few kilometres south of the town. The following days I explored the surroundings and I enjoyed the nature and the silence. After 4 days or so I thought I was time again to move on, and I went to see (and travel) the famous Alaska Highway which goes from Dawson's Creek to Alaska. I didn't go to Alaska, but I went to Whitehorse and Dawson City in the Yukon Territories. The coach arrived in Whitehorse somewhere around 4 in the morning, while the bus the Dawson City didn't leave until somewhere in the afternoon. So I just waited until I got light in the local outlet of Tim Horton's where they served excellent coffee and cookies. During the morning and noon I went to see the world's largest fish-stairs at the hydroelectric plant, the log-skyscraper and the MS Klondike which is an old, restored, sternwheeler. Then I took to bus to Dawson City which is an old goldminers city which still looks and feels the same as in the old days. There I put my tent up at the Dawson City River Hostel which also has a campground, it was rustic and funky, perhaps even a bit to rustic (and I can still smell the bathrooms :-( ) After I'd seen Dawson City I went back to Whitehorse to stay for the night at the Robert Service Campground which was very nice and friendly! An excellent place to stay! After that I went all the way back to Jasper in the Rockies, where I spend another few days. 

Then I took the bus along the Columbia Icefield-parkway which was an impressive sight, going straight trough the Rocky Mountain range, the bus ended in Lake Louise and I had planned to go to the campground in Lake Louise. When I arrived at the campground, they told me that there was a bear-warning, and I wasn't allowed to sleep in a tent on the campground. But they told me that there was an overflow-campground about 5 kilometres east on the Trans-Canada highway, so I walked there and put my tent up. At that campground I met two nice Americans, Bill and Limor from Seattle. They were on a cycling-holyday in the Canadian Rockies. Perhaps I've got to do that too, sometime (but I want to do so much...) In Lake Louise is a free shuttle service running to the most important trailheads and sights, so I had a few more hiking options than in Jasper. The surroundings of Lake Louise were really impressive, the only problem were the hordes of tourists running around. After I'd spent a few days there, I went on to Yoho National Park, west of Lake Louise. Yoho is much less crowded, and has perhaps an even more impressive landscape. There I hiked along the Iceline trail which is near the Takakkaw Falls. To get there I had to hitch hike, because it was more than 10 kilometres from the campground, and I wanted to walk in the nature and not only on the road to nature. That was perhaps the most impressive hike I've ever made, through fields of wild flowers and an enormous field of boulders, created by glaciers. I saw just a handful of people during that day. Unfortunately I had just one day in Yoho because my flight from Vancouver back to Toronto left the next day. In the evening I took the bus to Vancouver and spent the next day there. When I wanted to go to the airport, I waited and waited for a bus to come. Until someone told me that the bus drivers were on strike, and I had to take an expensive shuttle service from a hotel. But of course everybody had to take that service and it took about an hour before I finally was on the way to the airport. Unfortunately the driver had to go to about every hotel in Vancouver and I already had quite some delay. I arrived about 15 minutes before departure at the airport and somehow I (and even my luggage!) made it onto the plane. 

After arriving back in Toronto I just went to take a nap in the departure area, and the next morning I went to take a bus to Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Ottawa reminded me a bit of London and the campsite was more or less downtown, next to the government buildings. In Ottawa I visited an art gallery and  the aviation museum (which at first I didn't find because I went to the wrong airport.) After Ottawa I went back to Toronto to take the bus Niagara Falls and then onward to New York. The falls were impressive, but much to crowded and exploited. The American part of the falls has even incredibly ugly light-effects at night (see the photo part for that!) The border formalities at the American border took quite some more time than those to Canada. I even had to fill in a form that asked me I wanted to kill the American president or if wanted to commit some acts of terrorism (and that was even BEFORE September 11th.) I can't imagine that this helps, how stupid has a terrorist to be to answer 'yes' on this kind of questions?  

The weather in New York was really good, but hot, and of course I went to the statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center and on top of the Empire State Building. After that day I had to go back to Toronto to catch my flight back home two days later.