5C's Que Pasa

Aug 02, 2021

Banff, days two & three

I booked our reservation for Banff on April 12th, the day the system opened for RV reservations. I was online the moment that they started taking live reservations. I was 8,679 in line. I could not reserve three nights in a row. So I booked the first night you saw in the last post and the final two nights on the site on this post. There was only one other RV site between the two. We asked when we checked in and again later that Monday night and again on Tuesday morning, but there was no way we could stay put. So we moved, it only took an hour once the folks left their spot. Turns out it was a great site with more flat space and lots of sunshine. We decided to make it a day of rest. I sat outside with the girls and read while Colin played his guitar inside.

The only problem with this site was that it was next to the public bathrooms which gave the girls lots to bark at.

Lots of area to spread out. By putting the ramp within the fence the girls are free to go in and out at will.

My chair that I moved around depending on the sun which kept popping out.

This was taken from our first site. Kinda of looks like that wee thing was being pulled by the 45′ Class A. They actually were sharing a spot built for two RVs.

Another long RV.

This one had its own back balcony. Most of the RV’s are from Alberta & Quebec with a few from B.C.

I took photos as we walked around. This 5th wheel has no windows on this side.

That is a black door, the only one into the RV, it is plexiglass and you can see right into the RV. A new concept I guess, weather proof?

Still lots of smoke.

Very tiny RV mostly used for cooking. They had several children and two tents. The yellow is a badminton net.

After the move to the new site we just totally relaxed for the rest of the day. My planned dinner was ignored and I made something much simpler. We definitely are sleeping well in the RV. At home I get up every few hours, here I slept and only awoke once per night.

Smoky sunset.

Sadly Carlie came in with dozens of mosquitoes bites. Ciela had not a one. Obviously Carlie is much more sensitive to insect bites. The bites bothered her but I did not have any liquid Benadryl and didn’t think that my out of date non drowsy Claritin was a good idea. Dr Google was of no help. Sunset photos by Colin.

Wednesday had much less smoke and we got to see some magnificent mountains.

The girls discovered an interesting hole on our morning walk.

Made by a large enough critter that they could put their head into the opening. We had to keep them from digging further into the hole.

These lucky children did it all including roller blading and biking. Their parents kept them well entertained. The little girl even had a backpack type of bladder full of water with a hose to “water” the trees and not her brother. Nice family.

The only time we left the campground was Wednesday afternoon to get the Jeep tire torqued. We had planned to take the girls to the off leash dog park which is really well done and huge. However it was full of large active dogs so we moved on as we felt it was not safe for the twins. The town was crowded with bumper to bumper traffic. With all the activity in Edmonton we forgot to fill the Jeep so did so on this trip into town. Yikes at 1.459 per litre but we had to do that because of the fires, some gas stations in BC were running out of fuel. We discovered that back home the prices were 1.549 per litre. Still Edmonton would have been much less.

Once back at the RV we took a two hour break to do whatever we wanted to. Then we began to prepare for the trip home in the morning. Colin hooked up the Jeep to the RV which saves a good deal of time in the morning. I put things away here and there. Then I began to check the fire situation online. That took a while. As we might not have internet while driving I took some screen captures I might need to see re possible detours. We were somewhat concerned as there were not too many details. I also arranged for two friends to text me if something came up in the fire news that we needed to know about. We had picked up Subway for dinner while in town, I ate mine but was too tired to enjoy it. The smoke hung heavy in the air.

This is part two of my Banff posts. The first post can be found here.

Back to real time. The smoke continues, more fires have started, the Kelowna airport was closed today likely will be tomorrow as well because of smoke affecting landings and take offs. We did have some rain late yesterday afternoon but it was not enough to do much for the fire, it did wash the ash off our vehicles. With the humidity we are at 34C/93F today. 30 to 40% chance of showers over the next three days but that comes with wind and possible thunderstorms. Will that help or hinder the situation, we can only hope for the positive. We deep watered our tree roots today as I noticed that the leaves were drying up and falling. Hard to believe that the smoke appears to get thicker every day. Apparently in Kamloops some smoke detectors are going off because of the smoke intensity.