Bonners Ferry to Banff–Yep, Stopped and Seached at the Border

The Banff area is just lovely.   After the long drive, trouble at the border, and adjusting to Canadian speed limits, distances, and fluid measurements, let alone the blinding beauty of nearly the entire drive…all we did was set up camp, shower, and have dinner.   Along with getting up before 6 am to watch church, and pull out of camp at 8:30…it is now 12 hours later and we are both pretty beat.  As for the border crossing…well, they pulled us over, had both of us go into their building, had to give complete chronology of when we left Florida to when we got to the border (that did give me a chance to mention our blog which details the entire thing), remove the dogs, remove our important papers box after they looked inside of it – they then did a quick search of the motorhome and the HHR.  Oh, and I got a lesson on how to say “Banff”.  We just went with the flow of things, but I did not like the idea that Marcia had to get out, walk in, walk back out, and get back into the motorhome…seemed kind of strange to me.

   

We both agree that this part of the Rockies is much different than other parts that we have seen.  The variety of the look of the rocks, the massiveness of the mountains, and the sharp edges and points that many of the mountains have are amazing.

    

There is a silt from the glaciers which turns the lakes and rivers a turquoise blue or green.  All three of these shots are of the Kootenay River, which would go from a blue, to a turquoise, to even a green.  In one area, where we just could not stop due to narrow, steep roadway, the water was rushing so fast, and it was a pretty turquoise green…it is something neither of us have ever seen before.

There were signs up about black bears in the area, and no stopping along the road…which led to Marcia catching the rear end of the one that we saw as she begged me to stop (two other cars had stopped).  Hey, after that experience at the border, I have seen enough people in uniform today as far as I was concerned.  And something tells me that this is not the only bear we will see over the next few months.

All the pictures today were taken by Marcia, and we rarely stopped.  We are here for six nights, so I am sure there will be four or five days of getting many pictures of the beauty of this place.  When we leave on Saturday, we will head north through Jasper and plan to stay in Hinton, only 230 miles away.  I know we can’t see everything, but we will see a lot.  Stay tuned you all…we have landed in B A N I F F (yes, I know it is Banff, aka: “I don’t care how you pronounce it Mr. Border Man)   BTW:  There is a town of Banff, and there is Banff National Park. 

We are in Tunnel Mountain Trailer Court, a park run by Parks Canada outside the city of Banff.  We bought a yearly family pass already, and it is good for two years due to the celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the Canadian Park System.

The sites have water, sewer and 30 amp electric.  They are all pull through in a sense, but some are split in half for two shorter vehicles.  We have plenty of room for our car, our motorhome, and another car if someone was to visit.  It is quiet, so far, but we have been warned that it is a Canadian 3 day weekend coming up, so Friday might get a bit crazy.