Day 7 August 15
Memories:
Grace: The bear in the hot chocolate
Danny: taking 20 minutes to get wifi
Gordon:
Therese: Seeing a cloud in the sky, waterfall, eating the fresh strawberries
We always have Camp Oatmeal on days we break camp because it’s easy to make and easy to clean up. I pre-mix instant oats, powdered milk and brown sugar ahead of time so it’s just a scoop of oat mixture to two scoops of water. I always have hot water on hand because I need to start each day with coffee. And, by the way, nothing tastes better than morning coffee at the campsite.
It’s nice as the kids get older, they are responsible not only for their own camp pads, sleeping bags and luggage, but they are also very helpful when it comes to setting up and taking down the tent and doing dishes. We still take about 2.5 hours to eat, break camp and pack up.
My original plan was to go to the coffee shop/laundromat/wifi cafe in Jasper which had great reviews and would solve our deteriorating laundry problem. But that would add significantly to our travel time so I called the hotel we would be staying at in a couple days to see if they had guest laundry and lo and behold they did. So we gritted our teeth and accepted the fact that we would be in double re-runs of clothes but at least our underwear supplies would hold out. The promise of wifi and a beverage and a treat was too strong though so I got Gordon and the kids settled in at the cafe and then headed out to forage. Danny remembers this stop as the time it took 20 minutes to figure out how to get wifi working on his Kindle. We all remember it for the beautiful steamed milk designs on the kids’ hot chocolate.
I had been miserably cold the last few nights when the temps got into the low 40s. Banff’s overnight temps were forecast to be even lower so I needed to find a new sleeping bag. It was on my to-do list before leaving for this trip but I never got around to it so I had grabbed our cheap back-up sleeping bag. It wasn’t cutting it. Fortunately, I found a fleece liner for a sleeping bag at an outdoor store and saved some money and now have a blanket I can keep in the car. Next, it was off to the Farmer’s Market for some produce for the next couple days.
I picked up the family and off we went. Our drive was about four hours but we planned a couple stops so we knew it would take a bit longer.
We stopped at a couple pull-outs for recommended views and then made a longer stop at a waterfall highly recommended by our “tour guide”. It was certainly beautiful and well worth the short hike to get there. On the way out, we ate the Farmer’s Market strawberries: delicious.
Our drive took us on the Columbia Ice Field Parkway which is simply beautiful - it’s been named the most beautiful stretch of highway in the country and I would have to agree. It’s pretty amazing to see glaciers hanging off every mountain.
Our final stop was the Glacier Visitor’s Center. We wanted to see if there was any way to touch a glacier without having to spend $300 to ride a bus onto the ice and spend three hours on the tour. There is not. We did learn that there is a lower parking lot where visitors can get a much closer look. But by the time we made our way to the information desk and back, our time was running short. I would advise future visitors who don’t want to ride the expensive bus to skip the visitor’s center and head straight to the lower parking lot and hike to the glacier lookout. We will do this if we ever return.
We headed out for our last two hours to Banff and our campground there.
The drive took us through town. This was our second time driving through town and enough to convince us that mass transit was the way to go.
We got to our campsite around 6:30. Sites in both campgrounds were very nice. We camped in centrally located, very large, very crowded campsites. but because of the dense ridge pole pines, each site feels pretty isolated. We have been lucky to be located in easy distance, but not right on top of bathrooms. You know you’ve been camping for a while when the kids excitedly report on the bigger bathrooms with actual hand dryers and showers. However, despite the excitement over the showers, no showers were actually taken.
I got to try out my new griddle surface on the camp stove when we made flatbread pizzas. My original plan had been to cook these over the fire, but the dry conditions in the park had resulted in a fire ban.
It was too late and we were too tired to plan for the next day, but that what breakfast is for…
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