RV Adventures

I’m running way behind here on posts.  That is what happens when you are having fun!  The pictures of the mountains are just a sample of what I took…there are too many to post all!

Saturday, September 20

We have spent the last week playing in the Canadian Rockies.  Where to begin?  We saw so much.  I have a feeling this blog post is going to be more pictures than words.  Words can’t do these peaks justice.
Jasper is the northern most park in this part of the Rockies, and that is where we started.  We honeymooned in Banff and Jasper 30 years ago.  Things have really changed.  Thirty years ago, I preferred Banff to Jasper.  This time, it was the opposite.  Jasper is still pretty laid back.  Banff is for the tour buses (more on that later).

We arrived in Jasper and didn’t have a reservation at the campground…and this is what happens. We were relegated to the “Winter Parking lot”.  That was actually fine, we had power, a wonderful view, and no dirt was traipsed into Blue.

Then next couple of days was spent wandering all around.  We hiked, we drove, we saw the sights.

View the slideshow.  I’m going to let the pictures speak for me (and the captions).

After playing in Jasper, we headed south and up in altitude to the Columbia Icefield.  This location is approximately halfway between Jasper and Banff.  We were up to around 6800 feet when at the visitor center…and I could tell.  We bought a ticket to take one of the “buses” out on to the glacier.  By the way, this is the only sight we repeated form our honeymoon!  The ice is way back from where it was in 1984.

We knew from checking ahead that we could dry camp at the Icefield Visitor’s Center Parking lot.  So we did.  How often do you get to sleep at the foot of a glacier?  But by 7:00 the next morning, the altitude was bothering us, so it was time to further south and down in altitude to Banff.

Just a side note, we really didn’t realize how high up we were.  That night, we heard the suction cup grab bar in the shower pop off the wall.  When I went to bed, my side of the mattress was too firm (it’s one of those Select Comfort mattresses with an air bladder).  I couldn’t’ figure out how it had got inflated.  I had to turn on the generator to dump some air out of it  Now don’t get ahead of me…The next morning when I showered, the suction cup soap dish was half detached and the shampoo gave a pop when I opened it.  Ah ha!!!  High altitude equals lower air pressure equals a firmer mattress.  Duh!

Just before you get to Banff is the very famous Lake Louise.  Jim and I had a wonderful hike and a walk along the lake years ago.  This time, we couldn’t’ stand Lake Louise.  Imagine every tour bus in the province of Alberta all converging on Lake Louise at once.  In addition, renting RVs is the Canadian Rockies is HUGE.  So lets put all those RVs there too.  That is what if felt like.  We got out of the car, walked down to the shore, took one picture, and said “Let’s get out of here.”  It was a major disappointment.

We finished the drive to Banff and found it much more commercial these days.  The campground was very sad and tired.  We had made a reservation this time, but had to kick a squatter off our site (we think he was a squatter…he seemed to move his dilapidated small RV from empty site to empty site).  But we had power and that’s all we needed.

We did a number of hikes, drives, etc,. around Banff. Again, let the pictures speak for themselves.  We also had a treat.  We took the Banff Gondola up to 7000 feet, walked around the top of Sulfur Mountain and had a prime rib dinner at sunset.  It wsa quite the view.

Further observations:

By this time, we had gotten good at finding WiFi hotspots, since our only cheap way of communicating was via text message.  Buying a beer to get a WiFi hotspot password was not a hardship.

We are currently heading south on Highway 2 in Southern Alberta.  Within the next hour, we should be back in the USA.  Our next stop is Glacier National Park (we have our fingers crossed that the Highway to the Sun is still open).