The Beautiful Canadian Rockies - Banff, Lake Louise, and Jasper

Thursday, May 28, 2009 – As we were leaving Calgary this morning by way of the Trans-Canada Highway there was a young man hitchhiking right at the on-ramp. He was young and clean-cut looking so we picked him up. His name was Zoe and he was an 18 year old college student traveling across Canada for a summer adventure. He was very sweet and appreciative of the ride and we found him to be interesting. He had left Ontario on Saturday and had taken rides from a college professor, a man and wife, and a trucker that he rode with for two days. He is going to school to study motion picture and television production and was keeping a video record of his adventure. He traveled with us as far as Lake Louise which was our destination for the day. We let him out at the off-ramp and he continued on his way toward Vancouver. We pulled into the Lake Louise Campground which is a very peaceful and beautiful park surrounding by pine trees and mountains. After we got set up we rode with Bill and Pam about 30 miles back to Banff and walked around the town, had some lunch, and visited the magnificent Banff Springs Hotel. It is an enormous grey stone building that is unlike anything we have seen before not only in its size but also the beauty of its surroundings. We returned to the campground where we met some very nice people. Across from us was a young family from Holland traveling around Canada for 19 days. They have two young children, Ellen and Devin, who came across the street to visit which was quite brave of them considering they were from another country and spoke very limited English. Shortly after, their parents came over and were in awe of our motorhome since apparently they never see bus type RVs in Europe and ours is quite a bit larger than the one they have rented for their “holiday.” A little later we met a great couple from Ontario, Canada who are traveling across the country to deliver a small older model motorhome to their son who plans to live in it. Their names were Di and Keith Thomson and it turns out that he is a firefighter from the London Ontario Fire Department so he and Bill really hit it off. We exchanged phone numbers and contact information with them and hopefully we can keep in touch.

On the subject of nice people – while we were pulled over at a gas station waiting for Bill and Pam to fill up a couple in a truck and pulling a horse trailer pulled into the parking lot and saw that we were from California. They came to the door of our coach, introduced themselves and asked if we would like to join them for breakfast. We told them we were with friends and just waiting for them to get gas so we couldn’t join them but it was such a nice gesture on their part and came as a very pleasant surprise to us. It is really too bad that the worst element of society gets so much attention in the news and press because we always meet the nicest people on our travels across the country. Whether it is helping us buy subway tokens in Boston, directing us to discounted show tickets in New York City, helping us get into a broken door lock on the motorhome or just sitting around a campground and visiting one of the great benefits of traveling the way we do is meeting so many fantastic people from all walks of life.

Friday, May 29, 2009 – We drove the short distance from the campground over to Chateau Lake Louise. The Chateau is a large elegant hotel set within the most exquisitely beautiful surroundings I have ever seen. The Canadian Rockies really defy description and as beautiful as our Rocky Mountains are these are more so. Lake Louise is still largely frozen over so we could not even see the crystal clear water and the reflection of the mountains that is shown in photographs and postcards but it was beautiful nevertheless. After we left the Chateau we drove up to the Mountain Lodge and got our tickets to ride the gondola up to the top of the mountain. At the top there was a wild life interpretive center with a film and very informative displays about the animals found in the area. On the way back down in the gondola we saw two grizzly bears on the hillside just to the right of our path. We returned to the campground and while we were sitting outside talking the Dutch family across from us returned from their day’s activities and they came over and visited for a short time. Around 6 PM Bill and I took the Dickey’s truck and went back to the Lake Louise Village Grill to have some dinner and watch the Los Angeles Lakers win the NBA Western Division Championship.

Saturday, May 30, 2009 – We left Lake Louise and traveled on the Icefields Parkway toward Jasper. We passed through some of the most beautiful mountains and glaciers we have ever seen. The Canadian Rockies are truly breathtaking in their beauty. About half way between Lake Louise and Jasper we stopped at the Columbia Icefield. We took an excursion on a large snowmobile type vehicle out onto the Athabasca Glacier. It was cold but not unbearable and the sights were spectacular. The guide gave us a lot of interesting facts about the glacier and the icefield including: the depth of the ice where we stopped is approximately 1000 feet, the glacier grows about 45’ in the winter and shrinks about 75’ during the summer, the icefield gets about 21 to 30 feet of snow every year, and the Columbia Icefield is 95 times larger than Central Park in New York City. Along the way we saw three bears, one of them right at the edge of the road; a mountain goat right at the side of the road; a moose and her very young baby grazing on the banks of the Athabasca River, and an eagle. We pulled in for the night in Hinton at the Hinton/Jasper KOA. It is a nice park with good facilities. I went into town and did some grocery shopping then came home and did the laundry while Bill made dinner. After dinner we sat down with Bill and Pam and planned out our route for the next couple of days. We decided to skip going to Edmonton to see the World’s Largest Mall because it would add several hundred miles and at least a couple of days to the trip. Instead we are going to take a more direct and scenic route to Dawson Creek and the start of the Alaska Highway.