Zurich - Rocky Mountains

We actually wanted to start a blog a while ago, but with all the traveling, painting, photography, and processing of impressions, we never really found the time. However, when we spent two weeks in the Rocky Mountains helping a family build a log cabin, we finally found the time to sit down and get started. In the five months since we left Zurich, so much has happened. More than could be described in a single blog post. That’s why we’re writing this entry, in which we roughly outline our travel route up to this point. Heavily loaded with two backpacks each and a large bag full of food, we left Zurich by train on May 2. After an overnight journey with only an hour’s delay (which still ruined our connecting train), we arrived in Hamburg, from where we continued to Hirtshals on the Danish North Sea coast. The next afternoon, we boarded the ferry heading to Iceland. Four days later, we arrived in Seyðisfjörður, located on the east coast of Iceland. To reach Reykjavik, from where we would fly to Vancouver six days later, we still had to head all the way to the west. So, we combined this journey with a small Iceland tour and rented a medium-sized car, in which we folded down the back seats, inflated our camping mats, and laid them inside. With this setup, we drove along the southern coast of Iceland, following the Ring Road. Among other things, we observed cute puffins and seals, marveled at glacier lakes, and enjoyed solitary hot springs. Sleeping in the car was, of course, not super comfortable, but given Icelandic accommodation prices, it was an easy choice, especially since we want our savings to last for several more months or even years.

The Canadian border officers at the gate in Reykjavik were just as annoying this time as they were ten years ago at the US-Canadian border, when I last entered Canada. The fact that we were entering without specific travel plans, no job in our home country, and no permanent residence seemed very strange to them, and they probably assumed right away that we would never leave again. I had already expected that they wouldn’t just let us through easily, but Lisa was a bit more shocked than I was. Well, in the end, they were convinced that we were trustworthy and gave us a little green sticker on our passports. Without that, we wouldn’t have been allowed to board. Of course, they hadn’t thought about the possibility that someone could just scrape the sticker off someone else’s passport and stick it on their own. It was all kind of a joke. But it was definitely a first taste of many moments we would experience during our travels in Canada, where we’d think, “This is kind of a silly, chaotic way of organizing things.” By the time we arrived in Vancouver, most of our trip had already been planned months in advance – train, ferry, and flight tickets were bought, and we had rented an Airbnb and a car. From here, however, everything was open. We had the vague plan of buying a car and driving north, but that was it. In the end, we bought a medium-sized SUV (a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe) and set up a bed in the back, in the same style as we had done with our camper van years before, just in a smaller format this time. With this, we drove first to Vancouver Island and then to the Southern Gulf Islands – a group of islands between the mainland and Vancouver Island – where we spent time traveling in our new home and working through Workaways.

Then we headed north to the Yukon. The drive from Vancouver to Whitehorse (the capital of the Yukon) takes about 27 hours by car – around 2400 km. Along the way, we occasionally went on hikes, camped in our car by turquoise blue lakes, and sometimes stopped at a Tim Hortons (the Canadian version of Starbucks) to get some internet and download a new audiobook for the road. In the Yukon, we spent almost two months (with detours to the Northwest Territories and Alaska), during which we, among other things, did a 9-day hike in Kluane National Park and Reserve (which covers an area about half the size of Switzerland), paddled down the Yukon River by canoe for two weeks, helped a family with dogs and horses around their house, marveled at the Northern Lights, swam in the Arctic Ocean, and watched grizzlies fishing for salmon. But by early September, it had become too cold in the far north to continue living “out of the car.” When you’re forced to be outside all the time, except for the time spent in bed or driving, it gets exhausting as the temperatures drop and the days get shorter. Reluctantly, but with unforgettable impressions and experiences, we left the Yukon heading southeast, driving through northern British Columbia into the Rocky Mountains. Along the way, we saw bears (both alive and dead), caribou, bison, beavers, and even a lynx.

But even in the Rockies, the increasing cold eventually caught up with us. The first snow soon covered the surrounding mountain peaks, and at night, temperatures dropped below freezing. So, we began making plans for how we would continue south, towards Mexico.