Week ending Jun 30, 2016 Banff

Friday, we did the C-level cirque hike.  Joan decided she had worked enough when we stopped for lunch, which was only buns, since John picked up a zip-loc bag of extra buns instead of the sandwiches from the counter.  The stop was about 15 minutes, give or take, from the top.  John carried on to the pond, where he got a picture of a mountain goat on Cascade, thanks to a couple who had been watching it for a while.   The hike took us from 10:40 to 2:30, a bit longer than we expected.

Mountain Orchid

Mountain Goat

Pool at the Cirque

Saturday, we strung a problem blind, again.  It didn't work.  Later on, we did the loop around the campground. 

On Sunday.  This time, we took all of the strings off the blind, (since they didn't follow the proper pattern,  and were too short), and threaded new ones through the way they are supposed to go.  This time, it seems to be working better.

A little trailer with solar panels on it, being pulled by a Tesla electric car came in beside us.  It was labeled Tesla X Canada, Victoria to St. Johns NL, 100% electric car with Camping Trailer. Promoting Sustainable Energy and Transportation.  They plugged in their car to recharge.  We had a chat with them about their experiences with solar power.   See their blog at http:teslaXCanada.com

Monday morning, about 8:30, Elizabeth came to join us on the hike to the Plains of the Six Glaciers.  It was a beautiful day for it.  We enjoyed our sandwiches, etc. sitting on rocks at the base of the ridge about .5k from the teahouse, and watched a chipmunk looking for handouts.  Since the views of the mountains and Lake Louise are beautiful from this spot, we decided it would be our turnaround point. 

 Lake Louise

Mt Lefroy and the Mitre

Cheeky chipmunk

When we got back to the trailer, Joan made us some good peanut butter, chocolate milkshakes.

Tuesday morning we did some cleanup, and organization.  On the way back from a quick drive to pick up some Valbella breakfast sausage in Canmore, we saw one of the few elk we have seen this year.

Elk with budding antlers

Wednesday we packed up early, headed to Cochrane to pick up medicine, groceries, mail.  Then to Petrocan and Humpty's  on highway 1&22  for lunch and diesel.  Stopped at Longview, but the campground there could only take us for 1 night  It has changed hands since we were there last year. We called Claresholm, but got voicemail.  Just in case we couldn't get in to Claresholm for the long weekend, we stopped in High River to fill our water tank.  We see lots of changes in town this year, with a lot of the condemned buildings finally demolished.  There is still a lot of work being done, but it looks much better now.  We headed toward Twin Valley Reservoir Campground (where we often stay on summer long weekends).   Stopped at Mac's in Nanton to pick up lottery tickets, which we forgot to get at Petrocan.  Decided we needed to try the FReal Reese's milkshakes, something we have thought about before, but never actually done.  They were a bit expensive for the size, but quite good, very thick, almost like soft ice cream.   We hadn't heard from Claresholm so we headed to Twin Valley. We are enjoying the songs of the meadowlarks here.

Week ending June 23, 2016 Banff

On Friday we walked along the top of the rim from the campground to the hotels.  Then we decided to walk down toward the river, crossing the path that heads down at an angle from the campground to the river.  Instead of taking this path back, we walked along the bottom area for a while, where we were passed by a fellow on a mountain bike.  After continuing that way some more, we came to a path back up the hill.  It was steep enough that the biker was still carrying his bike up the trail.  We decided that it was time head up, so we scrambled up the hill.  It took us quite a while, as the trail had loose rock, and sometimes we slid back a step or two.  However, after stopping a few times to rest, we finally got back to the top, not too far from our trailer. 

Saturday, we walked down to the Safeway in Banff.  It is now an IGA instead.  When we asked the checker when it had changed, she told us it was last Sunday. 

On Sunday afternoon, Elizabeth came out to walk with us around Johnston Lake.  It is an easy hike around a beautiful lake.  After supper, we enjoyed a chocolate cake with strawberries and a special yogurt which she brought.

Monday morning, we drove down to Banff, and walked along the Bow Falls Trail from Central Park, across the new (2013) wood pedestrian bridge, then along the river to Bow Falls.

 Tree in front of Bow Falls

Carol and Dave arrived in the afternoon.

On Tuesday, we all went for the hike up Sundance Canyon to the falls.  It was a fairly long trek, 3.2 km one way to the bottom of the canyon, then Dave and John did the slope up to the bridge across Sundance Creek.  It took us about 3 hours to do the hike, as we took it nice and slow, but it was well worth it.   

 Paintbrush in Horsetail

On the way back, sitting beside a backwater, Dave noticed a muskrat. 

When we got back to the Cave and Basin, we stopped at the Cafe there, where Dave bought us sandwiches.


Wednesday morning, we went to the shops in Banff so Carol could find gifts for the family.  In the afternoon we did the Johnston Canyon trail to the lower falls.    Although cars were parked along the Parkway, we managed to find a handy spot in the parking lot. 

Lower Falls

After finishing the walk, we came back for milkshakes in our new Ninja milkshake maker. 

Thursday morning, Carol and Dave left fairly early to head for home.   Later in the morning, John drained the hot water tank, at Dave's suggestion, to see if that would fix a problem with slow hot water flow.  Unfortunately, that hasn't fixed the problem.  The water drained was clear, even after we ran about 5 gallons through to flush anything left in the bottom.     In the afternoon, we did a wander around the trailer court.  

Week ending June 16, 2016 Olds to Dorothy to Vulcan to Banff

Friday morning, we left Olds.  We had seen 4 places to camp free in the Drumheller area, so we headed out to check them out (with the trailer behind us).  The first stop was Horsethief Canyon Viewpoint. 

 Meadowlark leaving a fence post

Whoever said there was camping there must have been in a truck camper, or tent, because a sizable trailer would block most of the parking.   We actually walked the 1km access road to check it out, as it didn't look like a large parking lot from the secondary road, and we are always concerned about not having room to turn the trailer around.  With this policy, we have only had to back the trailer out of tight spot once or twice.  While we were getting ready to walk out a Starland County truck came in to collect the garbage.  We chatted with the operator for a few minutes, and she had never seen anyone actually using the viewpoint to camp, but she could check with the office.  We told her not to bother, as there really wasn't room for us anyway.  

We carried on to Dorothy, where there is supposed to a free municipal campground.   This turned out to be a rest area.  We might have been able to pull a trailer in and back it in, but we figured it wasn't worthwhile.  However, Cottonwood Corners Campground,  half a kilometer from Dorothy, had power and electric for $25 a night. It  was empty except for what we assumed was the campground host's.  There was no one at the trailer.  Washrooms were okay, but need a thorough cleaning, and painting.   Once we got set up we walked back to Dorothy to check out  the 'ghost town' buildings.   A tree swallow kindly posed for us. 

Tree Swallow

There were two original residences and two churches.  The United Church had been bought for $50 around 1932, and moved from Finnegan, which is downstream where we crossed the Red Deer on the ferry a couple of years ago.

Dorothy United Church

Back at the campground, one other van drove through the campground in the evening, but decided not to stay, so we still had the campground to ourselves.  

It rained quite a bit Friday night.  When we got up on Saturday, there was still no host on site.   We went to the check out the Orkney Viewpoint, across the river from the Horsethief Viewpoint.  Same situation here for free camping, but even smaller. 

Orkney Hills Viewpoint Parking

Red Deer River from Orkney Hills Viewpoint

It was overcast for most of the day, so it was a good thing we weren't depending on solar for power.  We checked out a few campgrounds in the area for future reference.  On the way back to the trailer, we drove up the Rosebud River, across 11 bridges to the old mining town of Wayne.  All the bridges are one lane, so you have to stop if someone is approaching on the bridge. 

11 Bridges

Wayne has a small campground that might work on solar.   This weekend it had been booked out by a group in for a wedding.  There were a bunch of sports cars and at least one truck parked in Wayne, sporting Royal Rally insignia.     As we drove back to the trailer, several of them went roaring past us.   See the link for this event at http://www.comeroadrallywith.us/event/ab-royal-rally-badlands/

On Sunday, we woke up early.  The hosts' truck was at there trailer.   We got all packed up.  After stopping in Strathmore for diesel and Tims, which was conveniently at the Shell station, we carried on to Vulcan.   Virginia Mitchell Campground was full, so we headed to the campground behind the PetroCan.  We found out that it is Spock Days this weekend, and we arrived before people cleared out.   There were a few spaces in the campground, so we got all set up in time for the Nascar race at 11:00.

One of the interesting policies here was a credit card required so they could charge people for cleaning up the site after they left, particularly in the firepits. This prompted Joan to take a picture of the firepit, which had considerable garbage in it.   She took the picture in to show the owner the problem so we don't get charged because they couldn't be bothered to clean out garbage from a previous camper.  People are incredible.  It isn't like they don't have handy garbage bins.

Late Monday morning, we went to Stavely for a round of golf.

On Tuesday, John fixed the catch on the tailgate.  The hook that connects the catch to the pull had come out.  We did a short walk around Vulcan, including our favourite exercise machine circuit.

Wednesday morning, we got up early and walked over to the A&W at the PetroCan to have breakfast before packing up and heading for Banff.  There was a fairly strong SW wind, which we felt most of the way to Banff .  We ran into some construction west of Calgary on Highway 1.  They were repaving the section from Jumping Pound Creek to Scott Lake Hill, and we were down to one lane for a stretch, which almost brought traffic to a standstill.  It took us about an extra half hour to get through that area.  We were surprised we hadn't heard anything about this on Calgary traffic news, since we could have taken 1A instead.   However, we got to Tunnel Mountain in good time to get set up.  The attendants brought our attention to a wolf warning.  A wolf that has been looking for food in the campground, and found some in a cooler while a family were lunching at their table.   After getting set up, we went for a short walk around the campground.  It's nice to be back in the mountains.

Back at our view of Mt. Rundle

On Thursday, thanks to Elizabeth, we got  couple of loads of laundry done in the morning, while we enjoyed catching up with her.  Then we headed to the Barrier Lake Information Centre in Kananaskis to check on random camping areas in K-country.  Once we clarified that we weren't hiking in to a back country campground, but had a 34 foot trailer, she provided us with maps of the two main areas where this allowed, Motorized Public Land Use Zones of Kananaskis Country, particularly Mclean Creek,  and Ghost River Public Land Use Zone.  She warned us that we would be sharing with ATV's and people doing target shooting.   We reassured her that we were used to this activity from our time in the Arizona BLM areas.

We will be in Banff for a couple of weeks.

Week ending June 9, 2016 Foremost area to Bowden

Thursday afternoon we walked the 1.812 km path through the campground and around the Foremost Reservoir, before it dead ends.

On Friday, went for a squarish drive to check out communities east and north from Foremost.  The first stop was Nemiskam, which is a ghost town, mostly, about 10km east.  Drove around the few streets. 

Carried on to Etzikom, the home of the Canadian National Historic Wind Power Museum.  We were too early to go in (before 10am), but there were lots of windmills outside, with some interpretive signs.

Further down the road, we came to Orion.  It has a few houses and a very local co-op store (didn't even have the standard co-op logo).  Then on to Manyberries, where we were hoping to find a cinnamon bun.  No luck there.  The services sign showed a restaurant, which turns out to be in the hotel, but doesn't open until 11:00.  Once again, we should do a more thorough job of checking these things out before we hit the road.  All of the streets in town have berries in their names, including Saskatoon St.

Then we had to retrace a bit of our route, back past Orion, then north on SH 887 to the Red Rock Coulee Provincial Natural Area.  As we were reading the sign, a fellow on a motorcycle, slowly drove through, taking a quick look, and returned to the highway.  We went for the short walk into the coulee, where we found the concretions that had been exposed, with interesting lichen patterns on many of them.  

On to Seven Persons, where we stopped at Premium Sausage.  Nothing there insisted that we buy it, but they did have some cinammon buns that were packaged in Rolling Pin Bakery in Bow Island.  Then to Bow Island, where our first stop was for diesel, even though we didn't need any yet.  We figured saving 14c/l was worth it, even for 1/4 tank.     We stopped to take a picture of Pinto McBean, the town mascot.

We found Erna's Rolling Pin Bakery and cafe, where once again, we got in line behind some high school students.  It was a shorter line, so we picked up a blueberry fritter and caramel shake for John and a black licorice shake for Joan.  We enjoyed these sitting at a table in a little shaded spot across from the bakery.   On our way back south to Foremost, we checked out Forty Mile Regional Park.  It is $30 for power only, but had a very large site, with many trailers in it, and even a gate attendant.   It is located on Forty Mile Coulee, which has a couple of lakes in it, so it must be a popular fishing spot.  Apparently there are supposed to be moose in some of the coulees in this area, but none of them were kind enough to be near the road when we went by.

Saturday we did a bit of cleaning around the trailer.
Sunday, did some more cleaning. Nascar was rained out.

On Monday we got up early, packed up and headed for Olds, got set up early afternoon.  After we got set up, we picked up some supplies, including a Ninja Master Prep Pro to make milkshakes and cold coffee, since they don't sell it anymore.  In the evening, we watched bits of a little league baseball game from our trailer, which is about 20 feet from the right field fence. 

Tuesday, we checked with Home Hardware in Olds, and found that they had a couple of Bunjo bungee chairs in stock.  We had seen these in Sports Authority in Henderson Nevada, and figured they would be good to have.   Then we went to Mom and Dad's and helped with some Windows 10 concerns.   Back in Olds that evening, there was a real build-up of thunder clouds, just as Global Calgary was describing.    We got a bit of pea-sized hail, our first significant hail since we have been in the trailer.

Wednesday, we drove to Cochrane to pick up mail, and to Costco to pick up some supplies.

Thursday, we returned to Bowden, where we printed off our tax forms, and some tickets to the Dolly Parton concert in September at the Saddledome  It's nice to have access to a printer for the couple of times a year we need one. 

Week ending June 2, 2016 Waterton, Raymond, Foremost, Writing-on-Stone

Friday afternoon, we did the Waterton Shoreline Cruise.  Before we could pay for the trip, we had to wait to make sure there were at least 6 people to go.   About 12 people total went.  The guide, who has lived in Waterton all his life, was quite informative.  In addition to being a Canadian National Park, it was the first international peace park with Glacier National Park in the USA in 1932,  UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (in co-operation with the local ranchers) in 1979, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. One of the points he made was that only about 10% of the people who come to Waterton use the hiking trails.  Most of the people don't hike because of the bears.  He told us that over the years there was one fatality in the park due to a bear encounter, but 15 people have died getting too close to the edge of waterfalls.  There are 4 glaciers left around the lake, all of them on the US side of the border.  We saw the cut-line, and markers for the American border, half way down the lake.  The 'needles that touch the sky' mountain, according to native lore, dominates the south end of the lake. Most of the mountains were renamed by the members of the Palliser Expedition for themselves.  At Goat Haunt, the landing point in the USA, the rangers have begun preparing for the summer, but haven't opened it yet, so we just turned around and headed back to the dock.   Waterton is noted for that fact that the prairie comes up right to the foot of the mountains here with no foothills, creating a unique ecosystem. It was heavily used by the natives, particularly the Kootenai, until they were forced west of the mountains when the Blackfoot came to the area.  The geologists found that the foothills were actually pushed under the mountains here, a phenomenon known as the Lewis Overthrust.  The mountains are unusual in that the rocks are inverted, with the oldest rock at the top of the mountains.

 Our Cruise Boat

 Needles touching the sky

 Syncline and Anticline

One thing the guide told us was that the Red Rock Canyon Parkway opened today at 2pm for the weekend.  We promptly took advantage of that, driving to the Canyon, walking to Blakiston Falls.

  

 Harlequin ducks

Blackiston Falls

Saturday, we all got up fairly early and packed up.  Karen and Dominique headed to Sue and Trev's in Calgary.  We headed toward Foremost, for our visit to Writing on Stone Provincial Park, but had called ahead. Since it is their grad weekend, they didn't know if there would be space for us.  Since there aren't many places nearby, we won't arrive until Monday.  We checked out Lee Creek Campground in Cardston, but weren't confident that we could get satellite in their heavily treed park.  We carried on to Raymond, where we found the Perrett Park only had one other trailer in it.   We opted for site 1, got set up and paid for a couple of nights.

Sun, we did  walk around town.  Then we watched the rest of the Indy 500, then the Charlotte 600. 

Monday overnight it rained, and was still raining in the morning. After a quick breakfast, we went and got our rubber boots out of the car, as our site was a sea of mud.  As we were getting everything together to leave, we noticed that we had a flat tire on the 'utility' side of the trailer.  That explained why it was so hard to lower the stabilizer, since more weight had dropped on it as the tire deflated.  We phoned QT Tires, but they don't have a service truck.  They figured they could check the tire after lunch if we brought it in.   We dug out the tire changing gear, crawled under the back of the trailer to lower the spare tire.   Eventually, we got it all together and headed for the tire shop.  The problem was a drywall nail in the tire, probably from the building the house near the entrance to the park.  While we waited for the tire shop (1 guy) to fix the tire we went to Tru Hardware, where we found some string which will hopefully work to fix the blind at the back of the trailer.  Then we headed to Subway for lunch.  If it had been 15 minutes earlier,  we would have missed the lineup  of high school kids, so we decided to go across the street to the Burger Baron where we had a burger and donair, with potato wedges.   Not bad.  About 12:30 the tire was fixed. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the price was even less than we paid in Lake Charles to get a puncture fixed.  After switching out the spare with the repaired tire, we headed for Foremost.  Along the way, we saw a couple of antelopes.  At Wrentham we stopped to make sure the nuts were still torqued tight enough.  

Once we got to the Wayside Campground in Foremost, we selected a site and started getting set up in a virtual hurricane from the north (gusts to 53km/h) .  Fortunately, we got a satellite signal pretty quickly so we could get inside to dry out.   There was a lilac hedge behind us, which is a good windbreak when the prevailing west wind is blowing.  We saw a group of goldfinches in it.

Goldfinch

On Tuesday,  walked around Foremost, checking out the library, the diesel station (which is a cardlock, but does take credit cards), and picked up a few things at the grocery store. Karen and Dominique arrived late afternoon.

Wednesday late morning we headed south with Karen and Dominique to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.  It is situated on the Milk River, amidst a virtual forest of hoodoos.

The Visitor Centre has an extremely well done description of the culture of the time.  The area is sacred to the Blackfoot people, who consulted the petroglyphs on the stones on their way to each battle.  The largest petroglyph shows the alignment of battle lines between the Blackfoot and an alliance of Gros Ventre, Crow and Plains Cree.

Battle Scene

Left section

Middle section

We took a few pictures from Police Outpost overlook, then returned to the visitor centre to have lunch at tables overlooking the Milk River.  

Police Outpost

On the way back, we set the GPS to take us to Aden, which is just north of a border crossing.  The location of the 'town' according to the GPS was about 2 miles away from the location shown by our Back Roads book.  There was nothing but a single farm yard at either location.  

We saw some antelopes going out to the provincial park, and some more on our way back.

We went to the Y'all Come Back Saloon in Foremost for dinner to celebrate Karen's upcoming birthday.

Thursday morning, the girls headed back to Regina around noon.