15/05/2025

Up an out quickly, we decided to head straight on to Hinton, where we were staying three nights visiting R’s brother and sister-in-law. I would have liked to have visited the museum in Rocky Mountain House, and the brewery, but as events turned out, luckily, we did not. I had found an off-the-beaten route to drive to Hinton. It was the shortest route but did not follow the Canadian grid system of main roads. 

First off, we stopped at some small shops in Nordegg, one of which was a community shop. R wanted a washing-up sponge for the van, but no luck. She was told perhaps they’d have them later in the year. (The van came with no method of cleaning the crockery or cooking utensils, nor a tea-towel to dry anything with.) There was also a small ‘Shell Fuel’ shop, and that sold them. Next door there was a liquor store, where I popped in and bought some beers, brewed in Rocky Mountain House itself. The beers were displayed in a chilled room, so I was rather quick in buying them, cos it was rather cold wearing just shorts and T-shirt.

Back to the road, we drove another 1000 meters before taking my off-the-beaten route right-hand turn to Hinton. Hinton was signed as being another 170K. But there was something funny about this road; oops, it was a dirt track! Apparently a forest track, and looked to be all dirt. Not only was it dirt, it was wet dirt after a heavy overnight rainfall. It was quite slippery, so progress was slow. I noticed that no other vehicles were using it. We went this way for about another 5K, where there were signs warning that further on the road was under water. We (ie R) thought better of it (I thought we could have done it, I swear the water didn’t look that deep) and so turned around. Was not going to be a good trip. After this small detour, we found the van (and parts of R who’d directed my U-turn) were caked in mud, 25mm thick, which subsequently baked on with the hot sunshine.

Back on the main road we headed on towards the snowfields, and took a right-hand turn onto the 93. Yes, this route was longer at 260K, and not the 170K of the dirt road. Very pretty though. We will be back on that route another day.

We phoned to give our ETA, arriving at Hinton at 17:40. They didn’t warn us not to take the dirt road, cos nobody would do that.