THE BEST OF British
“I JUST WANT TO take a look,” I said to the obligatory blonde who was redirecting traffic away from Lake Louise. Have you ever noticed how often lollipop people are young blondes? Apparently they’re less likely to be abused by drivers. Makes sense, I guess, even in Canada where it’s hard to imagine any driver abusing anyone. “I promise I won’t park.” She shook her blonde mop, rather attractively I must admit, but she wasn’t about to budge.
“Go five kilometres back along the freeway and park, and you can catch a free shuttle into town,” she said, obviously having repeated those instructions all day. I tried lying and told here that I had named my younger daughter Louise after the town, but it didn’t work. She did another attractive headshake and pointed south. I scratched Lake Louise from my mental itinerary and headed west instead towards a nearby little town called Field, which of course was booked out. I finally found a motel in Golden, on the other side of Yoho National Park. I do not know if this is named after a local yodeler, but it’s very pretty anyway.
Golden is not, especially, but I was so glad to get a bed that I really didn’t mind. I stayed in an ordinary motel called Mary’s, which had one major advantage: it’s right next door to the Whitetooth Brewing Company, one of several dozen craft breweries I found on my travels.
The first of these was in Nelson, my initial overnight stop after crossing the border from the US at a small Washington State town called Danville. Even the short ride through Castlegar and Salmo was memorable, not least for the ticket I got just outside Ymir for failing to stop at a stop sign.
The very nice highway patrolman kept telling me to not worry about paying the fine because I was from Australia. He
