All Downhill

Though there were still some great sights still ahead, I had turned a corner with my trip to the Columbia Icefields, and it was clear that the remainder of the trip would be mainly about returning home and seeing some friends along the way. This post is about the last three days I spent in Canada before returning to the states.

The morning after my excursion to Lake Louise and the Columbia Icefields, the head cold I'd been fighting for several days broke out in earnest. I was glad that I'd already set this day aside to rest up, made possible when I decided not to make Calgary a side trip on its own, but simply drive through it on the way to Banff. If you've been following this blog, you're probably thinking by now that I'm very Type A, or crazy, or both; Until Banff, I was staying at a different location every night, driving 200 to 300 miles each day. That really is not my style. The compressed schedule of this trip was made necessary by delays in the completion of my RV, and commitments to be back in San Diego by the end of October. It really was very nice to stay at the same campsite three nights in a row in Banff.

That doesn't mean I spent my third day completely immobile, holed up in my motorhome. By 10am I set off on a leisurely driving tour of the town of Banff and its immediate surroundings. There's a loop road that takes you above the town:

In spite of its fame, Banff is quite compact; by the end of the afternoon I felt like I knew all of its streets and how they were connected. Venturing just a little out of town, there's a tramway. If I weren't feeling poorly due to the head cold, I might have taken it, though from what I could see, it didn't go very far or very high:

Not far from the tram is a waterfall on the Bow River, which I'd traveled along the previous day:

And not far from there is the Banff Fairmont Hotel:

It's an imposing structure, but in a very different way from the Fairmont at Lake Louise.

After that, I headed back to town for lunch. Parking for even my small RV was difficult, made more so by the fact that both maps and people in tourist info booths directed me to a parking lot that no longer allowed RVs. Once I got that sorted out, this place seemed to be my style:

I had a tostada that was actually pretty good, and a cold beer - for medicinal purposes, you understand. I asked the waiter where I could find wifi in town. He said they had it right there for customers, but I hadn't brought my computer. Afterward, I went to the town library for wifi, but it was closed, even though it was Monday and the middle of the day. Ohhhhh... Canadian Thanksgiving... right. So I headed back to the Magpie and Stump with my computer. Of course, I didn't want to freeload, so I felt obligated to order another beer.

On the way back to my van, I took this picture of the Bow River that runs beside town:

and this picture of the downtown area:

As you can see, the town is quite scenic, and they've managed to keep it fairly quaint.

After sleeping 12 hours that night, my cold was already considerably better the next morning, but a constant drizzle had moved in - the first real adverse weather I had encountered on the trip. I caught some free wifi at the library, which was open this time, before heading out of town. With the holiday weekend over, Banff seemed like a ghost town by comparison. 

The drive west from Banff is pretty, but not quite as breathtaking as the drive in from the east, I would say. What amazed me is that I drove five hours that day and it seemed like I was on a 4% to 6% downhill grade the entire time. I felt like I was driving to the center of the Earth. It rained steadily all day; I was glad I had no sightseeing planned. I passed through the Canadian Glacier National Park. It didn't seem as impressive as the U.S. version, but to be fair, I stayed on the highway and made no effort to explore.

As I neared Salmon Arm, a town next to a very pretty lake, I scanned the roadside for the RV park to which I'd emailed a request for a reservation. I was a bit nervous because I hadn't received a confirmation reply. There it was! I pulled in and... it was closed for the season. You'd think they would at least have the decency to post that on their website. Several days later I got an email telling me they were closed. Thanks. This was the first time on the trip that I was left with no known resting place for the night. With no cell phone or wifi service, I had little choice but to head further west and see what I would run across. Just two miles down the road was a sign pointing the way to an RV park. Yes, they were open and yes they had a space, and it was even nicer than the one where I'd tried to make the reservation. What a blessing!

The next day was more of the same, rain and mountainous scenery. With continuing rain, I knew I wouldn't want to see any sights in Vancouver, so I changed my plans to cross back into the U.S. that afternoon where my phone and wifi would work again. Before I left the wifi of the RV park, I made a reservation in Bellingham Washington and got a confirmation almost immediately. When I got to Kamloops, I turned off Highway 1 onto Highway 5, which saves at least an hour on the trip to Vancouver. I used the border crossing at Sumas, a bit east of Vancouver. It was a very short wait, but they immediately directed me into the inspection lane. A very nice agent informed me that he would inspect my RV while I waited inside the station. For no reason in particular, this made me nervous. The agent returned holding at arms length a bag with a few molding tomatoes that I'd had since I left San Diego. He said once they had been to Canada, they were no longer welcome back, and I said he could have them.

After getting a bit lost on back roads leading to Bellingham, I found my RV park for the night. It was good to be back in the U.S.

The next post will explain how my RV came to spend nine days in the Seattle area though I only spent three.