Last summer, we had the privilege to join other paddlers from the Church of the Double Bladed Paddle for the first ever COTDBP Jamboree. Facebook memories from other attendees had us thinking fondly of our experience… and we realized we’d never shared any of that here.
Although Banff is within our comfortable daily driving distance, we decided to break up the travel a bit and make it a more vacation-style road trip. We had recently added both the Volvo and our kayak trailer to our vehicle line-up, which allowed us to bring more of our demo fleet for other attendees to use.
Day 1: North to Glacier National Park, Canada
Having loaded the car the night before, we left Tacoma around 7 am.
We drove to Bellingham where we had breakfast at the Birch Door Cafe (a favorite of ours). We stopped in Kamloops to pick up groceries and fill the gas tank. From there, we headed along Highway 1, enjoying the gorgeous scenery. 
We were originally planning on some backcountry charcuterie in our campsite, but we had gotten off-track on our schedule. So we decided to stop for dinner in Revelstoke, BC.
What do you do when you’re hungry and it’s dinner time and you’re having trouble with your iPhone internet research? You wander through a residential area until you see folks unloading their kayaks from their car and you ask them for a recommendation.
And that’s how you land at Big Eddy Pub. We enjoyed our meals and some beverages in their outdoor dining area.
We arrived at our campground in Glacier National Park around sunset and got ourselves cozy for the night.
Funny story: When we were making campsite reservations, we knew that Glacier National Park in Montana extends past the US/Canada border. We did NOT realized that it changes names and is a completely different spot than Glacier National Park, Canada. We figured it out during the planning process, but it was a surprise at one point.
Day 2: Sight Seeing on the way to Banff
Around mid-morning we broke camp and headed out. We got to Golden, BC in time for a late lunch. We checked out Golden Outdoors and then headed to Reposados Tacos. If you are in the area, we highly recommend both. We were not expecting to get some of the best tacos of our lives in BC, Canada. But we did.
Did we head straight to Banff from there? Nope.
When you are planning a road trip to meet up with fellow travelers and you ask Google for things to check out along the way… and Google says that the World’s Largest Paddle is a scant 30 minute detour… well, you plan a detour.
We added another bit to our detour to swing by Radium Hot Springs but didn’t stop. That route did take us through some interesting scenery though!
We landed in Banff, AB just in time to find our campsite at Two Jack Main Campground, drop off the trailer, and then head to meet up with the rest of the group for a quick logistics talk.
On our way back to camp, we took a quick side trip to check out the launch for the morning: Two Jack Lake.
Then back to camp to set up, make dinner, enjoy some campfire time, and tuck in for the night.
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