The Worst Day of the Trip

Montana - was I even there?  It feels like we repeated the same drive two days in a row, only the second day it was called Montana instead of North Dakota.  We arrived at the Crystal Inn next to the tiny Great Falls airport just in front of a massive storm system that blew all night.  We've been driving seven to eight hours every day.  We're tired, tired, tired.  Every day the state of foggy fatigue we wake up with is getting harder to shake off, regardless of the amount of caffeine consumed.  Today is the end of the long road trip.  We're about six hours away from Canmore, Alberta, a small town right outside of Banff National Park.

Back on the road.  It’s raining quite hard and Bunny's new mantra over the last two days, "I just want to get there", is the one and only focus.  Canadian customs had a different plan for us.  We were told to pull off the road and we spent the next three hours in a waiting room.  I wondered if passengers on an airplane delayed for hours on the runway felt like we did.  There's no official communication, no provision for food or drink no matter how long you wait, navigating the restroom seems to take special training, and fellow detainees are all behaving abnormally to hide their frustration.  There didn't seem to be any profiling going on, because every type of traveler was pulled over; truckers, retirees in campers, hunters, motorcyclists, students, and tourists like us.  Then, about 15 minutes before lunchtime, suddenly every window was filled with a customs official and the waiting room emptied as everyone’s documentation got processed all at the same time.  What was that all about?  A rite of passage?  

More tired than ever, with the rain not letting up, we’d hoped to miss rush hour traffic in Calgary, a big sprawling town that has been growing like mad for years.  We ended up right in the middle of it and crawled our way through the city for an hour and a half.  Used to the excess of overhead traffic signs in North Carolina, a small shield announcing a major highway and tacked to a utility pole was easy to miss (several times).

With the constant rain increasing in intensity, we arrived in Canmore and managed to find the condo we rented.  Looking through the instructions from the owner, apparently he included all the codes for the parking garage (called a parkade here) and the elevators, but left off the code to get into the condo.  Everything is a keyless access in that building.  Only a door separating us from the never ending tyranny of the road. 

I had an overwhelming urge to plop down in the middle of the hallway and kick and scream obscenities at the stupidity of...ME for not confirming everything.  But in our present state of mind, getting reported and having to explain anything to the local authorities would probably not go well.  The condo owner has a home in Calgary and, after about an hour, he was available to tell us the code over the phone.  He had revised his instruction sheet for renters and had revised that important information out of the final copy. 
Hallelujah!  We’re here! I'm going to sleep for the next twelve hours.            

Sweet Dreams in the Canadian Rockies (finally)!