Banff

May 22   Fort MacLeod to Banff National Park  184 miles  4hrs 20mins 

The drive today was kind of slow because of the weather. We stopped in Calgary to find Costco and fill up on gas. Very expensive in Canada, $1.32 per liter. That comes out to $4.99 per gallon... and that's at Costco! The worst part is we went thru some road construction and got tar all over the RV and car. The car looks pretty trashed. Our green car has black tar all over it. We're pretty sick but can't really do anything right now.

I can't believe how expensive everything is here. We got to Banff and stopped to pay our park fees to enter. I knew about this and the charge was $19.60 per car/RV. What surprised me is the charge is per day, not just to get in. So because the weather is so bad, we will probably spend the whole week in Banff and Jasper. We ended up getting a 1 year park pass for $136.00. We're spending the next 4 nights at Tunnel Mountain Trailer Court. It's $38 per night and it's pretty nice here. There's a lot of deer and elk all over the campground.

After settling in, we took a drive out to Lake Minnewanka which is really nice. It's pretty overcast and rainy so I think it would've been nicer if it was a nice, sunny day. We saw a lot of deer, elk, and big horn sheep. It's rainy and cold tonight, probably go down to the low 40's.

 May 23     The temperature today was low 30's....that's freezing! It rained most of the night and this morning was pretty gloomy so we stayed in most of the day. At about 11am, it started snowing. Finally at 5pm, we were getting pretty futless so we went out for dinner. When we went out to the car it had snow and ice all over it. Because I had a raincoat and Joe didn't, I had to clean all the ice and snow off the windshield. Such a wasted day because of the weather but at least our TV works. Only 2 channels but at least its something.

I had to clean the car while Joe waited

May 24    

It's another cold and rainy day, low 30's again. At least it stopped snowing, but still very wet. We went for a drive this afternoon and found Banff Upper Hot Springs. Was kind of crowded so we're going to try to go for a swim tomorrow.

We found Bow Falls which was very nice. Too bad it's so cold...we couldn't stay and walk around the area.

May 25     It's still pretty cold but not as rainy. We took a ride to Lake Louise today. On the way, we stopped at Johnston Canyon and went for a short hike, about 1 mile.

It was mostly uphill and a lot of it was on a catwalk. It was really, really cold but I wanted to do this hike after not much activity the last 2 days. Joe was a good sport. We hiked to the lower falls at Johnston Canyon and it was really something, I'm glad we did it. Joe enjoyed it too....I think.

Then we drove to Lake Louise. Huge lake and absolutely beautiful, even in this ugly, rainy, cold, gloomy weather.

On the way back we stopped at Banff Upper Hot Springs but it was pretty crowded. We decided to go home and have dinner and come back later. When we went back around 8pm, it was still crowded. I was really disappointed but that's okay. Just have to try the one near Jasper.