OH MY !

 

DAY 5

Banff Parkway 

   We slept like the condemned with no worries ahead of us.  Jim woke up about 4:00am full of energy, He cooked a special breakfast for both of us, and we just relaxed until about 11:00am.  Took a couple of short walks around the Tunnel Mountain Campground and chatted with a couple of our fellow adventurers with GAH.

                                                      Campground-  Like the view

     When we first drove into our campground, we noticed 2 Elk grazing alongside the road.  Like true tourists, we stopped and took a couple of pictures and then checked into the campground.  We were assigned a campsite at the far reaches of the campground and proceeded to drive to it.  Guess who was at the campsite to greet us?  You got it, the Elk, only there were 4 of them.  They were actually about 40 feet from our campsite and stayed nearby our entire stay.

     Not having a car in Banff severely hampers out ability to see and do quite a bit of stuff that we would love to.  There is a very efficient bus system that can take us from the campground to various places of interest with connections every 40 minutes.  We have decided to walk from campground to downtown and to the Banff Springs hotel and get a bit of exercise.

                                                                                            Our campsite is behind the behind

    Banff is located in a valley amongst some of the most amazing scenery imaginable.  The village is surrounded by shear granite mountains rising dramatically to the sky.  Our stroll to the village turns in to  2.5 mile walk that takes us about 40 minutes.  We have stiff necks looking up the entire time at the mountains.

    Banff is a picturesque town with modern Alpine styled stores and business’.  It is a World class destination and is meticulously clean and well maintained.  We stopped at a pub and had lunch.  Terrific food but typical European style service.  It took about 40 minutes for our food to be served and the restaurant was not busy.  Oh well, we enjoyed the meal, the atmosphere and good conversation.

                    Downtown Banff

                                                                                     

  After lunch we started to walk up to the Banff Springs Hotel, but opt to take the bus the mile and a half or so.  The hotel is an architectural master piece, stunningly built out of stone.   The pictures you see in books and online do not capture the true feeling for this place.  39 years later, we remember why we wanted to come here for our honeymoon.   We have decided that this is our 40^th anniversary present to each other.

                                               In front of he Banff Springs Hotel

     For the entire day, the skies threatened us with rain or snow.   Temperature was chilly and we thought we had made a mistake by leaving our rain gear at the motor home.  Fortunately, the rain held off and all we got were some light spits, not even sprinkles.  Back to the motor home about 3:00 in afternoon for Hot Chocolate and popcorn.   And a nap.

     What is becoming a theme and a source of frustration to us is the inability to communicate via wifi.  To avoid astronomical fees, we turned off our mobile phone wifi’s at the border.  Our mobile plans do not include international access except at exorbitant rates.  Campgrounds have wifi, but it is about dial up speed and unreliable.  We have been taking a ton of pictures and cannot upload them to the web.  Jim is using his phone as a camera because it uploads automatically to Drop Box.  Just not in Canada.

     We will continue to try and upload to the blog as well as email but fear we may have to wait until we arrive in Alaska to post the blog or send many pictures.  Many times with no reason our wifi will just quit.  Everything we have worked on to that point will just disappear. 

    .     It is truly difficult to put into words just how beautiful Banff is.  It takes our breath away and re-inforces that we want more.  While we feel we are somehow cheating ourselves by not spending more time here, our goal is to spend time in Alaska.  So with some misgivings about shortchanging ourselves, we head to bed and wait for the next part of our adventure, Lake Louise and the Ice Field Parkway.