We Have A Good Routine

Thursday May 22
Left out early from Charley Lake Campground in Ft St John. Everyone got a shower (2 loonies got us 10 minutes of luxurious hot water) and we did laundry for the first time. Good spirits thanks to being all clean, despite our sadness at having to say goodbye to Kara, relief driver extraordinaire, at the airport in town.

Heading south toward Jasper and plan to spend a day on the Icefields Parkway tomorrow. Today we are traveling through farm country with smaller hills and fewer steep grades, which will change as we get closer to Jasper. Entered Alberta today, as well, which is our third and final province in Canada. Highlight of the day was the town of Beaver, complete with giant beaver statue for a photo op. Hans is driving, and doing a better than expected job on music selection. Keeping Will’s death metal playlist out of circulation is vital to my mental health at this point.

Friday we are traveling through Jasper National Park, the Icefields Parkway, and Banff Park. The Canadian Rockies! Weather is beautiful, and our campsite for last night at Pocohontas was perfect (meaning they had flush toilets).

Back above the snow line in the parks, and very cold. Stopped at the Columbia Icefields for some photos but decided to skip the somewhat underwhelming Skywalk in the same area.  Ice and snow all around us!

Stopped for fuel and snacks just shy of Lake Louise and got our most impressive sticker shock at the pump–a $240 not-quite-fill up.

Amber and I decided we needed to make snow angels in the giant snowbank next to Bow Glacier. Confirmed snow is cold, wet, and deep.

We’d planned to stay at Lake Louise for the night, but the campground there was closed to tent campers due to bears. We decided to continue on into Banff where the bears must find it too expensive. We got a cold campsite at Tunnel Mountain campground and headed into town on the city bus for elk burgers and some good, albeit expensive, beers…and wifi! Banff is a beautiful town, just as we remembered from our trip a few years ago.  Nice to get to see it again, as we never imagined on our last trip here that we’d be back again in a short bus.

Saturday 24th
We stopped in town for a few photos before heading back onto the Trans-Canadian toward Kootenay Park and the Radium Hot Springs, our destination for tonight. In the park we had a much sunnier day and saw deer and grizzly bear along the roadside, as well as more mountain views and patches of ice and snow. Hans did a good bit of driving through the curvy roads today, proving himself an able teammate and Donski relief driver.

Got into the campground very early today, leaving time for Don and Hans to take a short hike and the rest of us to loiter in the sunshine for the afternoon. We sent the youngest Millennials into town with the bus to get pizza, while we relaxed and enjoyed the view of the mountains from our comfortable campsite.

Tomorrow we return to America with our crossing back into Montana. Sunday we rolled out of Radium around 10am, for our 13th day on the road. This is the longest stretch I’ve ever done sleeping in a tent, and I might be getting too old for this! We have a good routine, though, with Don and I waking up a bit earlier and putting the coffee on before we try to wake up the 20-somethings. They usually take a while to get their tents down and the bus reloaded, but it is a lot easier than on the early part of last year’s rally, where we were trying to roust 12 of them every day!

Today is our last day with Hans, as he is departing from Eureka, Montana to head back home to Seattle. We will miss his enthusiasm and readiness to help with the drive, loading, and coffee making: all things that make the bus run smoothly.

Sarah