John Rachal's Blog

DAY 16, June 6, Thursday

We lingered in a provincial park only a hop away from Banff this morning since check-in at Banff was not until 2pm. I cooked eggs and pancakes and Val microwaved grits for both of us and she had part of a donut and coffee. Our individual roles are solidifying: she does almost all of the cooking and dishwashing (I make too much of a mess in our tiny kitchen but I don’t mind doing it outside; at home, I do most of the dishwashing). She also does virtually all the logistics and technology. I do almost all the driving and dog-walking (at least three times per day) as well as most of the grumbling. We fairly equally share the various tasks of setting up and breaking camp, and we review routes and discuss daily agendas. I hope to improve on the tech, which would allow her to drive a little more and marginally advance my pitiable skills.

I got a fairly nice shot of part of a rainbow over rain-shrouded mountains this morning, and maybe it will make it to Facebook. But I am aware that most of us generally like people in our pictures, and scenery shots grow pretty old pretty quickly.

It’s been chilly most of the day, only about 56 at 2pm., with grey and gloomy skies all day. At 8pm it was 52, and it is supposed to go down to 34 by early morning, with rain tonight, an hour or so of snow early tomorrow morning, and then more rain all day. Val said that she was glad not to be in a tent, like the folks forty feet across the lane from us. Ditto here.

Our campground seems rather crowded to me, with sites close together in regimented rows. Even its name, Tunnel Mountain Trailer Court, in Banff National Park, is hardly endearing. But the mountain scenery is spectacular. The town of Banff is within the park, and it is young and hip and touristy. More like Whitefish, less like our beloved Kalispell. We had an enjoyable pizza dinner, did a tiny bit of shopping (I bought some hiking socks), shivered our way back to the car, and returned to our sleeping mutts in the camper.

DAY 17, June 7, Friday

Woke up this morning about 6 and it was already snowing, temperature in the mid-30s. The snow is heavy and wet, with flakes about the size of your thumbprint. It doesn’t seem to be sticking on the road, happily, as we have a few errands to run. As of 11am, it was still snowing hard.

We drove to Canmore, about 15 miles away, to get the oil and air filter changed. Unexpectedly, we found Canmore a good bit more appealing than the tourist mecca Banff (the town)—though still a little touristy, it was far less so than Banff, and had the weather been nicer, it would have been quite pretty.

We watched a DVD movie on the camper TV, a first. Knocked off about 10:30.

DAY 18, June 8, Saturday

The temperature got down to around 33 last night, and I set off from the camper for a walking trail around 9:30, with a temperature of 37. All the remnants of yesterday’s two to three inch snow were gone. The trail sometimes went by the fast-flowing Bow River and ended up somewhere close to downtown, with a final 50 foot precipitous and rocky descent down to the water. I thought better of going all the way to the water, especially since I had forgotten my walking stick. That was the turnaround point and I headed back. The trail generally had gentle undulations, though occasionally there were some double digit grades, and at one point there was a hundred yard stretch that maxed out at 21%. My bicycle Garmin claimed that it couldn’t find satellites, but somehow it could usually determine grade, so it wrongly reduced my eight-mile walk to less than two. On flat ground I was averaging about 2.5 mph, and I think my overall was about 2.0.

I saw a few birds—ducks, ravens, a downy woodpecker, and a fair number of the sparrow persuasion, though determining denominational affiliation was difficult. They may have been Jesuits, or possibly Zoroastrians.

I was damned tired after this little excursion, and it provided my legs with a good reminder that they would have to return to work when we got home. But I summoned the energy to join Val for a trip down the hill to town, where we went to a bakery, a small grocery store, a small hardware store, and then I cooled my warm heels sitting in the car while Val wandered for a little while more, using the GPS walking feature on her phone.