Month: June 2010

“Rain rain go away, big boys want to play (with cars)”

We awake to typically Northwet weather: light rain and solid overcast skies. Thankfully the buffet breakfast is excellent and puts me in a good mood, though my back does not relish being folded into the cramped cockpit of the E-type all day, despite the promise of a short one. I head down to the garage while Chris takes his time getting packed up to go. I check the car’s fluids and vital running bits, and head up to the front of the lodge for the checkout for the first stage.

It is very wet, and I park the 65E off to the side and pull out my telephoto for some shots of cars leaving the checkout.

Christopher finally emerges from the Lodge and we’re one of the last cars out. The segment is very straightforward, north towards Eureka, MT, then down Lake Koocanusa on the famed “Better Than Sex Highway” along the lake towards Libby. The segment ends at the boat launch parking lot at the south end of the lake. I’ve driven this road many times, almost always in conjunction with the Going To The Sun Rally, so Chris doesn’t really have to do any navigational work, so he just chills out on his iPod, keeps an eye on the clock, and tries to stay warm and dry.

This time the highway issn’t all the great, and nowhere near “better than sex”, as the rain combined with my tires make for dull driving. I run on some Pirellis that are fine on dry pavement, but frankly lousy in the wet. Spirited driving is off the menu until the water stops falling from the sky. So instead of roaring along this road enjoying Sir William’s Sixth Symphony reverberating off the rock walls we’re crammed into our leaky compartment like twin baby turtles still in the egg, and moving about as fast southbound on MT 37.

We arrive at the stand-off for the second-to-last checkpoint of the rally and it is an odd one. It stands at the bottom of a large campground complex at the south end of the lake. The start cone sits in an odd choke-point and the route snakes around a stand of trees and back behind to the final cone & checkpoint. It is really hard to judge the distance and estimate a run-time because you can not see the whole thing from any perspective… least of all out the small side window of an E-type with the top up!

Chris & I are able to watch a few cars go through the final run at different times, so we calculate a 45 second run and go for it when our time came. Chris provides a perfect countdown for me and we once again zero.

The boat launch and bait store has high-octane, ethanol-free gas available for sale (The reason I suspect that Rich Taylor picked this sport for a checkpoint!) so we take advantage and fill up the tank. The Jag does indeed run better on the 98 Octane stuff! No pinging at all.

We get our checkout time and commence the final timed stage of the rally with a run through Libby Montana, to Hope, Idaho. This one takes me on the only other road I have yet to travel, Montana Highway 56. It is a north-south cut-off between US 2 and Montana Highway 200 that roughly parallels the Idaho border, but first, we follow US 2 through Libby with our Ferrari escort:

The navigation is pretty simple, but as we’re on the last inning of a perfect game so to speak, Chris is serious about getting it right.

We arrive at Montana Highway 200 take a right, soon find ourselves at the Idaho border, and take a quick roadside “bio-break” and photo-op.

The checkpoint is out of a peninsula of Lake Pend Orielle a bit beyond the town of Hope, Idaho at a restaurant named “Beyond Hope” (get it? Idaho is just filled with jokers!) Chris guides me there with good directions and we arrive at the standoff with plenty of time to spare. The scenery would be awesome if it weren’t for the low clouds and rain.

Not long after we arrive we get to watch my folks go through the final checkpoint.

Our time comes and once again Chris guides me in with a well-executed countdown and we zero the final checkpoint. A perfect rally! I park the car and grab my cameras for some parking lots shots of many of the cars I haven’t had much chance to capture until now. Being at the back of the pack has meant many of them I’ve only caught glimpses of…

From lunch we have a simple transit stage to Coeur d’Alene, the spot where we started just a few days ago. Chris checks into our room while I tend to the car. I’m really proud of this car. It has performed near flawlessly this whole event, and has represented the Jaguar marque very well! Chris sends me a text to let me know the room number, and I amble over. This time we’re on the 14th floor with an even better view than before!

All that’s left is the final dinner, and drive home…

The day starts out with a VERY long TSD (Monte Carlo style) segment from Banff to the little village of Longview, AB (which, by the way, filled in for Wyoming in Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven’) via Canmore and one particular road I have yet to travel (this rally only has three of these, and two happen today!) Keeping to our strategy, which has worked well so far, we keep to the back of the pack and leave a bit late. Oddly downtown Banff has a ghost-town appearance as we drive down Banff Avenue towards Highway 1…

We leave town on Highway 1, but leave it in Canmore, and then follow a really nice road out of town and past the ski area where the ’88 Olympics were held. This is the first road of the rally I have yet to ever drive and it is filled with surprises. It is named Alberta Highway 40, and is a truly great road. If you haven’t ever driven it I strongly suggest you put it on your list. It isn’t a challenging drive so much as a scenic wonder. Literally every turn provides yet another mind-blowing vista. Don’t drive this road in a cramped coupe with gun-slit windows! get yourself an open car with plenty of visibility. Pictures do NOT do this justice, but I’ll share with you a chronological series of images as we drove it north-south:

Shortly after the above photo was taken Chris & I encounter a Grizzly Bear on the right shoulder of the road, as I slow to snap a photo of him he darts into the trees and out of sight. Amazing!

As the northern Rockies really have no foothills to speak of, we abruptly exit the mountains and arrive at the checkpoint standoff in the small village of Longview with time to spare. Oddly I never shot any photos at this checkpoint, located in the parking lot of a school. The weather is fantastic; sunny and warm. We successfully zero the checkpoint and before we check out for the next segment head across the highway for a pit stop at a gas station. I don’t bother to fill the car as it is good, but we grab some refreshments and visit the “facilities” before we hit the road again. This Alberta Highway 22 is familiar ground to me as we’ve used it on family trips when returning from Calgary via Crowsnest pass, though it has been 15-some years since Chris & I last drove it. I’m sure all he can recall is seeing the dinosaurs at Drumheller, as he was a small boy then and that is all that counted in his world at the time. This road follows a wonderful green valley at the base of the Rockies. The mountains rise to our right as we head south, and the vast prairies on our left are obscured by a gentle rise. We mosey along and are passed by the few rally cars that left behind us.

This road is very pleasant, and the navigation fairly minimal so Chris & I chat and soak up scenery. At one point we see some cowboys on horseback working a herd of cattle and I note what looks like an orange furry caterpillar chasing a stray… simultaneously Chris & I realize that it is a Welsh Corgi. Since we have a small pack of useless Corgis at home it is a treat to see one doing what it was bred to do, actually being useful! The only things our Corgis are able to chase is kibble and cars in our driveway. Not very useful!

The road has very little traffic, just a few pickups and the occasional rally car.

We hit a “T” intersection at Highway 3, and unlike past Goolsbee journeys we take a left, instead of the westward trek up through Crowsnest Pass. This time we drop down east onto the prairies, through windfarms and flats into Fort MacLeod. (or as Chris & I kept saying in goofy accent: “Fort MacLeod of the Clan McLeod… THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!“) Down on the prairie it was hot, and the checkpoint standoff was in a dusty parking lot with little or no shade. We were one of the last cars in the pack and so were late for the lunch, which was served in the museum inside the fort across the street.

The Mounties were supposed to be performing their “musical ride” for us after lunch. As we were waiting for our turn through the checkpoint the “Mounties” rode by…

I think I was the only person who noted that they were all teenage girls. Either this means that they are the ‘second string’ since this is Sunday and the real Mounties have the day off, or they are in fact the only people they can find interested in riding horses anymore. I suspect the latter as I’m sure the folks that join the RCMP are more interested in tazering tired tourists in airports and other such modern police activities rather than entertaining tourists on horseback.

You’ll note one “PsuedoMountie” is checking out Chris and his cool car. 😉

We zero the checkpoint and head in for lunch. This is what is on the menu:

It is bison stew and frybread. OK, not so yum, but it did the trick. Chris took a pass on it but did plunder several servings of Huckleberry Cobbler.

From here it is all transit stages as we’re going across the Canada/US border and through Glacier National Park. We’ve got half a tank of gas and I decide that even though prices are low (for Canada) in Alberta they are even 25% less back in the good old USA, so I decide to make a run for the border on what we have. The drive is pleasant, with the Rockies looming to our right, and endless prairies extending to our left. The road is virtually empty save a few tourists heading for Waterton/Glacier Park on the Canadian side.

We arrive at the border and it is a parade of sports and exotic cars with a sprinkling of SUVs and Toyotas. Truly a weird scene. My car is damn near out of gas, so I shut off the engine and only run it when the queue moves forward. I cross the border fairly often and have become disillusioned about the process. It is as if the DHS folks think that by slowing the process down they’ll improve our security against terrorists. What used to be a simple process is now a long drawn-out one, even though materially nothing has changed about it. They still ask you the same questions, now they just do it much, MUCH slower. So here at this truly remote, windswept place, where there is very little, if indeed almost NO traffic, it STILL takes almost an hour to pass through the border of my own country. Only one lane is open, and each car takes between 3 and 5 minutes. Compare this to the 15 seconds it really takes to ask the four questions or so, and still does operate that way going northbound into Canada. Sigh.

Anyway the long wait in the queue does allow me to shoot some photos – over Christopher’s protests, who thinks that doing so will only make us endure a body cavity search when we make it to the front.

Unlike the border in northwest Washington where I live there are no cheap gas stations just past the customs house gate. Here it is just ten more miles of open prairie before the next small village. Somehow the Jaguar manages to sip the remaining benzine fumes enough to get me to gas in Babb, Montana. We fill up, and head south for St. Mary’s and hopefully, a drive over the Going To The Sun Road. My folks passed us in Babb, and when we arrive in St. Mary’s they inform us that the park road is closed 17 miles in, either for construction, or snow removal. Disappointed we drive south to US 2 via US 89 and Montana Highway 49, an always entertaining road. At East Glacier I make a quick pit-stop at the East Glacier Park Lodge. Chris is annoyed but I tell him that this building is really special and he should join me for a quick peek. Inside is a real treat. The last time I was here my camera batteries were dead and I was not equipped with a good wide angle lens. As you can see by the abusive distortion I’ve been beating your eyes with for the past several pages I now have such a lens in my possession!

Chris has of course seen similar places, especially Paradise Lodge on Mount Rainier, but I have always loved this place for the gigantic Douglas Fir columns and cathedral-like design. The logs were brought by rail from the Pacific Northwest to build this lodge, and I can only imagine the extreme care required to fell, transport, and erect them without damage to their bark!

The Lodge was built by the Hills of the Northern Pacific Railroad one hundred years ago at what I can only imagine was an immense expense. An amazing place, and a glimpse into a bygone era.

From here it is a straight and easy shot along the highly familiar US Highway 2 to Whitefish and our lodgings for the night on the Lake. Ever since the border crossing dark clouds have loomed on the western horizon and I instictively know that when we pass east to west over the Continental Divide we’ll hit rain. I keep my eye on cars going eastbound and note their condition. When I see them arriving wet with their wipers still going I know our luck is about to run out. I pull over and start erecting our mobile shelter. My parents come up behind us just as we’re finishing the job and pull over, asking what I think. I tell them I’m certain we’re in for rain and offer to help them with their top. Dad declines(!) and drives off. I climb in and follow them. Sure enough it starts to drizzle, and as we descend into the Flathead Valley, it turns to rain. They finally pull over in West Glacier and I help them erect the Mercedes roof, which thankfully is much faster than the Jag’s. By the time we get a mile or so down the road in Hungry Horse the rain has transformed into a deluge…

I have never experienced hard rain like this in the Northwest. This is the sort of deluge that is common on the Gulf Coast or Florida, but is almost unheard of here. HUGE volumes of water falling from the sky, to the point where the road is completely submerged and visibility is near zero. The photograph above was NOT taken during the worst of it, as that would have been foolhardy to attempt. Somehow I manage to pilot the E-type through this storm and as we near Whitefish it abates back down to merely heavy rain. We arrive at the Lodge at Whitefish lake and they open their garage to us as hail is feared to be coming.

Our room is awesome and they even have free Internet access (take that Canada!)

Tomorrow we rally back to Couer d’Alene and finish the event.

Apologies for failing to “liveblog” the last two days of the 2010 Northwest Passage Vintage Rally. Both days were epic in one way or another, as we had some of this…

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But we also had some of that…

I’ll post the rest of the story, and photos within a day or two. Today we have to drive back to western Washington, and then I have to drop my folks off at the airport. See you soon!

No rallying today, so I went out on a bit of a photo safari. Enjoy!

More coming soon.