Three photos by Dave Brus © , one of my companions on the trip:
It was thrilling for me as a sheltered youth to meet travelers from Germany, England and Australia in the hostels.
Van Morrison
Moondance
First time I was really aware of this album (other than the song Moondance), they played it over a public address system in a campground in Banff, the first night (besides the night in the Calgary YMCA) of our bicycle trip in the Canadian Rockies. It was perfect. The evening of the one and only time I went to a bar on my bike and tried to ride back to the campground a little tipsy...after riding 90 miles that day, Calgary to Banff- seeing the mountains off on the horizon most of the day, until we finally reached them in the late afternoon. I made it
back to the campground- but it was a challenge- we were all laughing at each other.
At one point, on our way to Yoho Park, via Banff Park from Jasper, we stopped for lunch,
and I took some snaps with my pocket camera. Later in the day, about sixty miles closer to Yoho, I realized I had left
my camera behind. I locked my bike to a rail, and tried to hitch back to the lunch stop, to no avail. By the time I had given up, the others were far ahead of me. On the way to our destination, I saw a train enter a tunnel in Yoho, and realized I could see both ends of the train- the tunnel wound inside a mountain and emerged on the same side, but at a different elevation. But no camera. Then I rode on up this gravel approach road, and what did I see grazing right by the road, but an elk, paying me no mind. A huge, majestic animal it was. And me with no camera. Finally I came to this set of switchbacks. This was the road to Tatakawa Falls, the highest falls in Canada,
and a popular tourist destination. So tour buses would climb this road. In order to negotiate it, they would pull into the extensions, and then alternately back up (or down) or go forward through the switchbacks. I would have been a nervous passenger on such a bus!
My friend Dave Stewart took these photos:
These photos © Dave Stewart, 1976