Day Fourteen. Back to Fernie

Phew – last night was a bit of an adventure. I woke up for a pee in the early hours, went outside the van and heard rustling noises in the pitch black. Had the fastest pee ever and just as I was about to get back inside I looked down to see torches zigzagging around from the only other campers on the site, followed by ‘SHOO!’ and ‘GET AWAY!’ as the people camping ran after something in the darkness. As you can imagine, this thoroughly put the wind up me… was it a cougar? Was it a bear? We’ll never know as the brave souls had left by the time we woke up. That was one evening when I was extremely glad to have four metal walls around me.

We didn’t much fancy hanging around Dry Gulch (for fear of being eaten) to make breakfast, so Jethro treated us to a fry up in Radium Hot Springs – very nice it was too.

We made our way steadily back to Fernie, trying not to think that it would be the last time we’d drive the route for a very long time… In the last two weeks, we’ve seen more beautiful scenery than we’d ever imagined, met countless friendly Canadians, eaten well (Trailmix Surprise), proved that camping can be an enjoyable experience (even in the winter) and travelled 2,599km. (Our limited mileage gave us a quota of 2,600km so we impressed the car hire company no end!)

Next stop is Vancouver and then home. It's sad that it's all coming to an end, but we're really glad we had the opportunity to see a bit more of Canada.