Rainy Days in Banff

We have limited time in Banff, so even when we got a rainy forecast we continued our sight-seeing schedule. We are finding that an elk herd likes to meander near our campground.

We saw the mothers and babies in the forest right along the road on more than one occasion.

We didn't realize that an elk baby has spots similar to a fawn.

We were up early, as we started our day with a hike in Johnston Canyon.

This is on every list of must-see sights near Banff. But it also makes it incredibly crowded. We tried to stop here when we had guests, but the parking lot was full and cars were parked along the road for almost a mile in both directions. But early our first morning we scored a parking lot space and started the walk into the canyon.

Smooth walking trails make this family friendly and good for all hiking abilities. It's a pretty place to see with tall canyon walls and a stream that carved those walls. To add interest, there are also stops at some of the waterfalls. 

We could view the lower falls from the bridge,

or we could get in line to go through the tunnel to get up close and personal to the lower falls. You are certain to get you and your camera wet to get the close-up picture of the roaring falls. You can ask us how we know!

Because we were there early, we had a pretty easy walk and could even get the occasional picture with few people in it.

We made our way to the end of the hike, for views of the much taller upper falls. 

The hike continues to "the ink pots," but we were saving our legs for another big hike this evening. So we turned around to make our way back down that cat walk to the car. Now it is later in the day and the masses have arrived. No pictures on the walk back because we were dodging people the entire time. The lines at the tunnel were long, and it just isn't fun walking in long lines of slow walkers. We were glad to check Johnston Canyon off our list as we saw the road was now lined with a mile of cars again.

The predicted rain started falling, and our sight seeing plans also changed. We made the drive to see the Vermillion Lakes. But we won't be putting the kayak on them to paddle up Echo Creek to see wildlife because of the rain.

At the viewpoint for the lakes, we found a colony of Colombian ground squirrels playing in the grass.

We also won't be making that hike that we were saving our legs for. It was just raining too hard to take a miserable walk up a muddy mountain. So we will be spending more time at our favorite Canadian bakery--Tim Horton's. We have a frequent visitor card here because their bakery items are good, and they have the best wifi in town. 

The good news about the rain is that people have shortened their stop at our campground, and we scored a third night's stay. So we relocated to a new camp site (and luckily got the electricity to work inside the motor home after some more work), and we had a third day in Banff. That allowed us to go on a rainy walk at the national park's largest lake--Lake Minnewanka.

A low-lying band of clouds is making a stripe across the mountain behind the lake this morning. Normally this place would be swarming with tourists, but we have the place virtually to ourselves this morning. With rain showers and temperatures in the 40's, it is nippy here today. Denisa has on a blouse, a hooded sweat shirt, and a jacket. That's not your usual July dress code!

We would have hiked further at the lake, but the trail was wet and slippery as it rained more. This bridge made a nice place to turn around, since the sign on the trail going further says all hikers must have bear spray and hike in groups of four or more. We would have some trouble finding two more people to hike further down that trail.

We are guessing that Lake Minnewanka is a beautiful place to be on a sunny day. But on a dreary day, we thought these cheerfully colored boats made for the brightest picture we could find.

After showers much of the day, the forecast says that it should clear off this evening and we have a special hike planned to the top of Sulphur Mountain. But as we drive toward the trail head, we can't even see the mountain for all the low lying clouds. Is this a good idea?

Most people arrive at the base of Sulphur Mountain to go to the Banff Upper Hot Springs. This was the reason that Canada formed this first national park--to protect the medicinal purity of the sulphur-laced hot waters of this magical spring. Today the masses are still soaking in the hot water on a cold rainy day.

We didn't go to the hot springs, as we are here to hike to the top of Sulphur Mountain on this rainy evening. We are still layered up with rain coats and sweat shirts as we start the steep trail up.
Unlike Johnston Canyon, we pretty well have the trail to ourselves--well except for those people buzzing overhead in the gondolas.

The mountain is covered with trees, but occasionally we get a view out through the clearing cut for the Banff Gondola. It's interesting to see the cars of gondola going up the mountain over our heads as we make our way higher up all those switchbacks.

It's getting steeper, and we've been on the trail for about two hours now. The drizzle has stopped, and we are now above those low-level clouds and into the sunshine.

We've been missing the blue skies, and it's nice to take off that rain coat. It turns out that hiking above the clouds was a great idea!

The last section is rocky and steep. It's here that the person in the gondola that paid $50 to glide effortlessly to the top of the mountain might think that was a great value.

But we made it to the top for the views of the town of Banff from above.

After visiting the area for three days, now we can see how it all fits together. We see that the town of Banff is sitting in a bowl surrounded by big beautiful mountains. We are staying in Tunnel Mountain campground, and Tunnel mountain seems quite large to us. But now it looks like a little hill in the middle of the valley surrounded by the big peaks. We can see the shiny ribbon that is the Bow River as it winds its way around town. Banff Springs Hotel is in the bottom of the picture, now lit up with sunshine.

We can zoom in to get an aerial view of the same hotel we walked to in the rain on our first day here.

The top of Sulphur Mountain is quite commercialized with a big building filled with restaurants and bars and the gondola station. But there is also a board walk that takes visitors even higher.

Our legs have just enough left in them to walk the extra kilometer to the top of Sanson Peak for more views far below.

It's fun to be standing on top of a mountain, looking down on the peaks around us.

At the very top is the old weather station that has made it through all kinds of weather over the years it has set atop this peak.

After all the rain of the last two days, it is nice to be strolling in shirt sleeves again. We found more of the red adirondack chairs, placed by the Canada National Parks to indicate especially picturesque places to take in the park's scenery. 

It's a beautiful place to propose marriage, as we watched this newly engaged couple taking pictures of the new ring.

We also found an old piano, with a written invitation to sit down and play a tune atop the mountain. Too bad that wet and cold weather has made most of the keys stick.

After a snack with a view, it was time to head back down the mountain. But this is the best part of the hike. That $50 gondola ride becomes free to hikers that make it to the top after 7:00 p.m. It is also available in the morning to hikers that arrive before 10:00 a.m. So we won't be making that long walk downhill tonight. Instead, we're gliding down the mountain in style!

The sun is setting as Mark hangs the camera out the gondola window for views of the sunlit mountains around us.

The mountain that took us two hours to climb up, is less than a ten minute ride down in a gondola. It's a good way to end our time in Banff, and after a couple days of rain it's nice to be wandering His wonders in the sunshine again!

A Stressful Day Moving to Banff

After six days in Cochrane, Alberta, it's time to head down the road to our next destination. This was a beautiful drive as those Canadian Rockies came into sight again. When driving this route in our car last week, we hadn't noticed the "wind gusts" signs through this section. But you can believe that driving a 35-foot-box down this highway we felt those gusts.

We drove right beside the Yates Mountain that we hiked up yesterday. It's in the middle of the picture below. When we were at the top, we had looked down to see this four-lane highway as a tiny line. Now we look up at the mountain to see that was quite an accomplishment to make it to the top.

We are headed to the center of the national parks part of our trip, and we knew that fuel would get more expensive and less available. So we stopped to get diesel on the drive today. What a zoo! Diesel costs five cents per liter (that's almost 20 centers per gallon) MORE at the truck lanes, so we pulled into the car lanes which were already backed up because two pumps weren't working. We're in our fifth year of motor home travel, and this was one of the most difficult fuel-ups ever.

The sign outside said diesel was 1.109. That sounds pretty good until you know that is the price per liter, not gallon. At 3.785 liters per gallon, that brings the price up to $4.20 per gallon. We're glad for the foreign exchange rate in our favor. The American dollar is strong, as each Canadian dollar equals .76 in our currency. So that brings our actual cost for that gallon of diesel back down to $3.22 per gallon. And that is your mathematics problem of the day!

In addition to converting liters to gallons, and kilometers to miles, we also must learn to recognize the Canadian coins. The smallest bill they have is $5, so we are carrying more coins these days. They are pictured below in descending value. The first large coin is worth $2 and is called a toonie. The second is a $1 coin and has a picture of one of our favorite birds--the loon. It is called a loonie. The rest of the coins are similar in size to American quarters, dimes, and nickels so that is handy. But Canada doesn't make pennies, so all the prices are rounded to the nearest five cents.

If we flip all of those coins over, the other side of each has a profile of Queen Elizabeth II. What's that about? According to the Canadian guide website, "Though Canada is an independent country, Britain's Queen Elizabeth remains the head of state. She doesn't play an active role in politics and her powers are mostly symbolic." Another source says that she is Queen of Canada as a matter of constitutional law, but most Canadians aren't crazy about supporting the Queen's lifestyle. We were surprised to learn that Canada didn't have its own constitution until 1982. And that is your history lesson of the day!

After our stressful diesel fill-up, it's a good thing we had the mountains to look at to calm us as we continued down the Trans-Canadian highway to our destination in Banff, Alberta.

We pulled into our site at Tunnel Mountain Village II, one of the coveted national park campgrounds in this area. When we were making reservations in February, we could only get two nights here, so it will be a fast stop. We are surrounded by mountains, and it's a beautiful place to be, as Denisa is standing at an intersection inside our campground.

It's a strange set-up, with wide roads that have electric pedestals on both sides. One of the reviews described it as the Canadian national park's version of Walmart parking. So we pulled into our camp site and plugged into the electricity. That's when we experienced another first in our five year journey--the power monitors inside the coach registered that we had no electricity. Mark started trouble-shooting immediately. We pulled into another open site, to make sure it wasn't our power pedestal. Nope. When we started our generator, we did have power in the coach. Mark started making phone calls to Tiffin, and they determined that the control board for our electric transfer switch was going out. Perhaps if Mark rewired the panel we could use the transfer switch that was working with the generator to transfer the pedestal electricity. Denisa is clue-less as she writes this, but again she thinks that Mark is remarkable. He managed to get the electricity working, and got the new part ordered. The only way Denisa could be helpful in all this was to find a place that the new part could be mailed to us as quickly as possible. That is a challenge in itself, as international shipping adds a layer of complexity and time to our need for a part quickly.

That last paragraph of information actually took hours to unfold. So our trip to Banff was actually a very stressful day. But now we had electricity (at least while Mark's rewiring temporary fix holds), so we headed into town to do a little exploring. We had already visited here a day with Denisa's mother and sisters, but we had several more stops to make. One was the national park museum, filled with stuffed examples of all the animals in the park. We arrived ten minutes before closing, so it was a quick tour.

We also walked to the famous Banff Springs Hotel. It looked quite close on the cartoon-like map we got at the visitors center, but it wasn't. It was starting to rain as we finally walked up the long drive-way.

Taking refuge inside its huge lobby, we took our first wildlife picture of the day--an oversized painting of a bear.

After the rain stopped, we made the walk to the Bow River that glides through the town of Banff. We followed the signs to Bow River Falls, which is actually a steep section of the river where the water roars downhill for close to a kilometer.

These were places that were hard to visit with our guests earlier because parking and driving in Banff can be a real challenge. So we walked to all of them today. Driving can be slow because there is so much car traffic, and so many pedestrians to dodge. The intersections downtown have very long lights, as first the cars are allowed to move in one direction, and then the other. Then the intersection is completely empty momentarily . . .

until the pedestrians get the green light, and they can cross in all directions or diagonally at the same time. It looks like chaos!

Once we found a parking place, we walked the miles in between these sights and got some exercise on this hectic moving day. Some days we think that traveling to Canada is too complicated. Between counting change in loonies and toonies, and figuring gas prices from liters, and dealing with international shipping, traveling here is a new experience. But the views out our motor home windows of those Canadian mountains still make us glad that we are here.