It is raining every day… Well we did manage to sneak in a 10 km walk between rain showers today in Lake Louise.

Today we experienced one of life’s ironies. As we exited Trans Canada highway number 1 in Lake Louise we anticipated driving to the lake itself. We came to a four way intersection and found a billboard sized sign the warned that big rigs wouldn’t like the extreme alpine road conditions ahead. So we turned off and went toward the campground. We barely were able to turn around in there. (It took a lot of backing and filling.) We then went the other way and found a good turn around but the parking lots were too small for us. We then tried the village and after circuiting the mall parking we found the overflow and RV parking. We hung over on both ends there, but felt comfortable leaving the rig. We went to the visitor center and got directions and found our way to the trail to the lake that followed the old tramway grade. We packed snacks, water, coats and camera and headed out on the five kilometer walk and 700 ft of climbing. The lake was beautiful so we took lots of pictures. Check our web page to see a panorama of the lake. The irony is that there was better parking for our rig at the lake than there was in the village. There were many big rigs and fleets of 40 foot buses in the parking lot.

For the next two days we will be in Banff, Alberta. We are just over the continental divide and the elevation is 5000 feet. We are in Canada and everything is metric here. So we are at 1524 meters. That also means that that 700 foot climb really was only 213 meters. That sounds a lot easier. It also means we have to watch out for bridges that are less than 3.9 meters tall and we only get 3.7 kilometers to the liter of fuel. Wow look at that, I only weigh 81 now! …So confusing.

We are really here on the shoulder season. Some campgrounds are closed, others only opened a few days ago. At the popular places, Banff and Lake Louise, there are many “Cruise Canada,” rental class C motor homes. These are the Ford or Chevy chassis with 24 to 30 ft coaches on them. Some of the people speak languages that we don’t understand. At the same time the primitive campgrounds are virtually deserted. We camped last night a few kilometers out of Radium Hot Springs in the Kootenai National Forest. There were 100 sites and three of us camped. We have seen eagles, deer, elk, mountain goat, bear and moose. The country is simply spectacular. Oh yes we found a couple of plies of “stuff” on our mountain trail that we believe was bear scat. The brochures recommend that you make lots of noise when you walk through bear country. Have you ever tried climbing a mountain trail singing “I am a happy wanderer along the mountain track, and as I go I love to sing, my knapsack on my back. Valdaree etc?” It must have worked, we didn’t run into any bear.

Bye now from Gary and Judy, high in the “Blue Canadian Rockies”