Banff Alberta - 2023

 

Well, Hello there!

We are off to Banff Alberta next.  Again, this was another smoky day.  Our window for leaving today is 0930 and 1030.  Again, we will be leaving around 10ish. (don’t want to get to the campground before the Wagon master, otherwise we have to pay for the group.)  We will be staying at the Tunnel Mountain Campground – Village II. But first we have to get there.

The drive is only about 145 miles and we cannot check in until 1400 this time.  The day before, the Wagon master gave us our national parks pass for Canada.  These passes are different then in the states.  The passes are for each individual and not for a car.  So, we both have to show the passes when we enter the national park.  There was a lot of construction on our original path through Calgary, so the wagon master drove it yesterday and then gave us new instructions on how to get there. (They were the same as Google’s way).  The traffic wasn’t bad until we headed out of Calgary to Banff.  It felt like we were on I-70 going into the mountains.  I like the roads where you see a car once a day.  Anyway, we took our time and pulled over to check out a lake.  Terry took a few pictures on the way that you can view here.  Just like the other campgrounds, we arrived early. 

The campground was huge as you can tell by our site number of 623.  We were in the middle of the park.  We had a pull through, or really it was just beside the road.  We had full hookups with 30A service.  Again, no WIFI in the park and we stayed for 3 nights.

This was marked a travel day with nothing else planned, so we did nothing.  The next morning, we took Scout out for a walk to see some Hoodoo’s.  They were about 1.5 miles away, I guess.  It was a nice walk and we didn’t have anything scheduled until 1100 and would last for 7 hours, so we wanted to ensure Scout was good before we left.

On our walk we ran across some red chairs.  In Canada, they put red chairs out in I think all national parks so you can get a view while resting your tootsies.  These are the first ones we have seen so far.  Here are the pictures for that walk.

The plan today is to hop on a tour bus for Lake Louise, about 30 miles away.  When we arrived, we did a little walk part way around the lake before getting back on the bus to our next stop; Lake Louise Ski area for lunch and a gondola ride to the toppish of the mountain.  Lunch was a buffet style lunch with ok food.  Nothing to talk about on that.  Next was the gondola ride.  We chose the open chair ride so we could get pictures without windows.  On the way up, we saw two grizzlies, a momma and older baby.  As soon as the bears came into view, I started snapping photos in case something happened when we got really close.  Guess what?  My battery died in the camera when we got really close.  I quickly swapped out the battery just as the bears went out of view.  Figures.  But wait!  There is another grizzly just up the hill from us.  I whip out the camera again for more pictures just so the chair lift can stop while the bear is on the other side of a tree.  I was still able to get some pictures of him too.  

Did I say I didn’t really care for that lift stopping at the steepest and highest section of the ride. Nope, didn’t like it at all!  Terry just laughed at me but I didn’t see the humor in it at all!  

We made it to the top and snapped some pictures of the mountains, then hopped back on for the ride back down.  We saw all three bears again and snapped some more pictures.  Here are those pictures.  Check out the claws on momma!

We then went to Lake Moraine, checked it out for about 30 minutes, then back to Banff to see some waterfalls and then back to camp.  We were scheduled to go into town for shopping, but no one wanted to do that, mainly because there was a storm coming, or at least a lot of rain coming. Here are the pictures of that trip less the ski lift.

The next day, we headed into town via the city bus.  It was free to ride to town, but cost two bucks each to come back.  That’s a racket.  We picked up some tee-shirts, lunch and then headed back home.  It was raining all day, but we were prepared.

As we were sitting in the RV, I saw a fox run by in the campground.  That is the first animal other than birds we have seen in a campground so far.

Well, that’s it for here.  Next stop is the Columbia Icefields.  Maybe we can find a frozen caveman.