Banff National park

We left Medicine Hat headed for Banff National Park. In Calgary we hit the mother of all traffic jams. Only way through Calgary is Rte 1, in the middle of town they had traffic down to one lane, took us nearly 1 ½ hours to make it through.

We were running low on propane, stopped in Canmore, just south of Banff when we spotted the only propane station we had seen for several days. It required us to unhook our tow car to gain access. When I went inside to ask for propane I was told the employee that knows how to pump it is not there, sorry. I blew my cork, “couldn’t you have a sign that says no service now”  Answer was you must not be from around here, everyone knows when he is not here”.

We hooked back up and headed to Banff, the approach is beautiful and roads are good. To stay in the park we paid a daily access fee, about $10.00 per person per day, and the camping fee, $35.00 per day. It is well worth it. The campground, called Tunnel Mountain, is full hookup pull through. For those of you that have pulled a large RV pull through sites make set up much easier. With a backdrop of the “backbone of the continent” snow covered mountains and forests.

Only about 10% of the sites were occupied, I can only imagine what the summer season must be like, over 380 campsites full of families.

We watched mule deer and young elk near our campsite. Observed a coyote forage in front of our RV, and studied the ground squirrels in and around our site. In Denver we called them prairie dogs, these were a cross between the Denver prairie dog and the familiar tree squirrel that we see in South Carolina. They burrow and live in communities, but unlike the Denver variety, climb trees. Last night a pair of young elk grazed just a few feet from our campsite, Barbara has yet to see a bear. The park ranger said they had been spotted down by the river, we traveled along it’s banks, no bears.

The Village of Banff reminds us of Vail Co, a ski vacation town, with overpriced food and trinkets. A better deal is to go south a few miles to Canmore. It is outside the park, and is a much better value for food and other shopping. It even has two bagel / coffee shops. We stopped and stocked up on bagels and food at the local Savemore.

We finally made it to Lake Louise. During our 1998 trip we bypassed Banff because the park was still snowbound in May. Here we are in the end of May and it was still frozen over. Nonetheless it was a beautiful setting.

Barb is getting around a little better using her cane. Leg swelling seems to be less, did some walking around Canmore,

We leave here on the 28^th for Dawson Creek to join up with the Caravan. Will be spending a few days along the way to restock RV and more exploring.