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.