How delightful it is to wake up surrounded by pine trees and sunshine. Yesterday, July 5th ,we woke up to rain, wind,clouds, puddles and mud. We weren’t very motivated to get started, so we didn’t. A late start and a border crossing into Canada yielded a beautiful drive through the prairie land of Alberta…..farming and ranching for as far a your eye could see.
Calgary is one of the biggest cities I have seen in a month and has a population of 900,000. It is very clean on the periphery with lots and lots of newer looking housing tracts. My question is why they were built so close together when there is so much land? I can’t answer that because we also don’t have any wifi access. Our phones and tablets are essentially off…the expense here for cellular Internet access is enormous. Could it be that Canada does not want its people glued to a machine? The subtle differences you see here are interesting. Everything is also written in French. You can’t buy liquor at Costco or WallMart. Our debit card was not accepted at Costco and their money looks funny! We arrived July 5th in Lake Louise about 9:30 at night but it was still daylight here in the north country!
Today we just explored and looked into what we want to see here. We tried to go to Lake Louise Chalet twice, but the traffic was so incredibly bad, we turned around. We will go early in the morning tomorrow. We started driving up towards an ice field, but got so enthralled with taking pictures of the wildflowers, that we never made it.
After an early dinner, we attended one of the ranger led shows in the camp ground on hiking “ToThe Top” of Temple Mountain. Great history lesson, safety tips, and humor. Our camp site is one of the nicest we have ever been in despite the fact that it only provides electricity 30 amps (occasionally), no available water and no sewer connection. The sites are all pull through that will accommodate a big rig and are situated at least 20 yards from your neighbor’s site with forest and pines in between for privacy….we hope to extend here at least 3 more days…we just have to ask daily for cancellations and be willing to move.