Day 9 & 10: August 17 & 18
The Drive:
Just as we did on the drive out to the mountains, we had a couple days that existed solely for the purpose of getting us from point A to point B. Or in this case: from point B back to point A.
We had two 6.5 hour drives with a big reward in the middle: a hotel complete wth real beds and a shower! We enjoyed the Home Inn so much that we had changed our reservation on the return trip to stay there again. Danny was especially excited about the pool. We were all excited about a return trip to the Dairy King which was one of our more popular Ice Cream stops early in our trip.
But I digress…
I took some pictures of the stuff we have to load into our car every time we break camp. The tent comes down, sleeping bags, camp pads and camp chairs are all dismantled and stowed in their appropriate stuff sacks. Food, dishes and other sundries are put away and the entire car is emptied and repacked.
We usually eat Camp Oatmeal because it only involves dirtying one pan. If we’re really in a hurry we use paper bowls and plastic spoons to make clean-up go a little faster.
We did pretty well on our exit from Banff National Park. While there were pretty stern bear warnings in Jasper, the big caution in Banff was fire. We were unable to light a fire and had to stick to the camp stove for meals.
As we left the camp, Grace suddenly began shouting: “a bear! a bear!”. Gordon was skeptical, but when we slowed down to look, sure enough: right across from our former campsite was a bear ambling just at the edge of the tree line. If we had opened the window and tossed out a baseball, we would have hit it. (Well…some of us might have missed.) We slowed down and snapped a few pictures. We even got to see it start up a tree. Then we headed out of the park and flagged down a ranger with the exciting news only to find out that someone had beat us to the scoop and the ranger was heading out to discourage the bear with some sort of unpleasantness.
Anyway…..back to our 13 hours of driving.
Hotel…Dairy King….swimming pool…
I also made my grocery trip and admit to spending a little too much time in the coop just across the street from the hotel. It’s kind like a very scaled down version of Costco - maybe closer to the big HyVees that sell large quantities of groceries but also clothing, household goods, etc. It’s actually sort of like the love child of Costco and Aldi because you need to pay to use a cart and it’s cash only.
Nevertheless, I made a pretty good haul including several varieties of Ketchup Potato Chips for Alyssa, our dedicated yard/house/guinea pig overseer. I got into a discussion with the cashier when I asked him what it took to get ones picture on the money. Did all Prime Ministers eventually end up on money? He said: “Anyone is OK except Trudeau.” Turns out, the guy hates Trudeau because he gave billions of dollars to terrorist immigrants and doesn’t spend any money on people who live in Canada. Really??!!?? The guy then complimented Donald Trump for being a child with too much power but at least he did some things right like averting a nuclear war with North Korea.
I tried to stay civil and present logical, factual counterpoints. But the guy informed me that he keeps up to date on politics because his mom is worried about Trump and he has to keep her informed. Oh dear! I guess Canada is not perfect after all.
A quick trip to the liquor store for beer rewards for neighbors (and dad) and I was off to the hotel to crank our three loads of laundry before bed.
The next morning we enjoyed the free breakfast which features a pancake machine which cranks out two pancakes on a converter belt over an agonizingly long wait during which time a little graphic shows the progress of the pancakes. I have no patience for it, but the kids love it!
We timed our trip to arrive at the International Peace Garden before they closed up shop at 6:00 pm. But that pesky little detail of time zone changes had us rolling in around 7:00 pm. Thankfully, there is no customs to go through to get in to the garden. That happens upon exit. So we pulled up to the booth just as the staff person was leaving for the night.
We set up camp to the setting sun and enjoyed a meal of tacos, or just the parts of tacos that a person might be inclined to eat in Grace’s case. No Ice Cream stop on this day so we made the best of it with chocolate pudding and hot chocolate.
The kids made up a game where they used wood chips and sticks to mark out an imaginary city on the ground around the campsite. (They have no idea how affirming two weeks with minimal social media and screens is every year.)
The campsite was pretty deserted and very peaceful. But too many episodes of Dexter had me up often during the night as one of the sole occupants of the campsite was a middle aged man traveling alone in a dusty camper pulled by a dusty truck with obscured license plates.
Needless to say, I worried needlessly.
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