July 20th is the day we finally reached “escape velocity”, and were able to head out on our great RV’ing adventure. Prior to this, we were caught up in readying our house for sale, closing the sale, and the Leaky Axle / Ford Warranty Nightmare episode.
Our first stop after leaving the Seattle area was near Kamloops, at Juniper Beach Provincial Park. After that, we spent five nights in or near Jasper National Park, which we thoroughly enjoyed. The Canadian Rockies are mountains on a grand scale – even grander than the Washington Cascades or Colorado Rockies. We stayed one night outside of the park, and then four nights at Jasper’s Pocahontas Campground. Surprisingly, with only ten-days notice, we were able to get on-line reservations both for Jasper and Banff. The drawback was that we weren’t able to reserve the same campsite for more than one or two days in a row (this has become a familiar pattern).
We especially enjoyed Jasper’s Malign Canyon, a narrow yet deep slot canyon with beautiful and intricate waterfalls and cascades.
After leaving Jasper, we spent four days out on the prairie, at Canada’s Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site, which commemorates the site of two early Hudson Bay’s Company trading posts.
We enjoyed Banff, but found it way too crowded – one hike, up a slot canyon on a catwalk, was busier than an airport!
Glacier was even more crowded – we showed up one day at 8:00 AM for the shuttle up to Logan’s pass, only to find a two hour wait. Instead, we drove over the Going-To-The-Sun road to the east, less crowded side of the park, and paddled Two Medicine Lake. The GTTS road is out of this world – I’d highly recommend the drive!
The next day, we showed up for the shuttle at 7:00 AM, and again found a two-hour wait, and this for a shuttle that only went half-way up to Logan’s pass. Glacier’s shuttle system is woefully inadequate – it makes more sense to just get a super-early start. We left the shuttle stop, and drove up to Logan Pass – at 8:00 AM the parking lot was already full! Instead, we parked on the shoulder a bit past the parking lot – not bad, as long as we watched our step getting out of the car (it was a long way down).
Anyway, here are pics from July, in no particular order. If there’s a theme, it’d be waterfalls – we never tire of seeing one:
Rumbles on the Road 