Back in town we stopped for ice cream before getting on the highway to head towards Revelstoke. Our hope was to find a campsite in Glacier National Park of Canada and continue to Revy in the morning. Just a couple kilometres onto the highway, however, we joined a long, double lane, standstill of cars. Turns out that an accident just east of Golden had closed the road for at least 3 more hours. We took an opportunity to turn around and headed back to the tourism centre in Lake Louise to see what our options were.

We knew there wouldn’t be much for campsites available in Banff National Park so we thought we might head down towards Radium instead. Our idea was foiled, however, as we learned that highway was closed because of wild fires. We were told of one first-come first-serve campground in Banff that miiight have a couple sites open, so we drove over to test our luck. We were likely just minutes shy of grabbing the last spot, but we weren’t overly disappointed as it was quite possible the ugliest campground in Banff - it was just a big area cleared of trees with rows and rows of gravel tent pads with zero privacy. We decided to follow the parkway back west towards Lake Louise and stop at a day camping area to cook dinner and wait out the roadblock.

After supper we returned to the Lake Louise junction to see that though the highway was reported open, the cars remained at a standstill. We chose to use the opportunity to visit the lake and find some cell service to sort out where we would stay that night. Realizing it would likely be after midnight before getting to a campsite, we figured it was time to cut our losses and book a hotel. I knew of a place in Golden with good rates, but with the road closed from that end as well, the town was all booked up. We ended up getting one of the last rooms in Revelstoke before joining the line up of cars on the highway.

The drive to Revelstoke was the worst of my life. It took us over two hours to travel the 28km from Lake Louise to Field, but that was better than what came once traffic funnelled down to single lane. If you’ve ever driven Roger’s Pass during the day you can imagine trying to navigate it on a packed night when everyone is in a hurry to make up for lost time. It wasn’t fun to say the least. The worst were the times when I’d see a sign warning that there were no road lines ahead just as I got blinded by an oncoming semi’s headlights. I literally just prayed that I wouldn’t drive off a cliff as I tried to keep track of the tail lights ahead of me. We finally pulled into the motel in Revelstoke around 2am and I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.