The First 24 Hours

For our trip to the Canadian Rockies we decided to rent a 30' RV, a true home on wheels! Tammy arrived 2 days early to provision and clean the RV in advance of our arrival on 7/1/06 (Kim, Carol and I). On 7/1/06 all was well until we discovered we (Carol and I) missed out flight to Calgary because of delays in Atlanta. This meant that Kim and Tammy would need to replay "The Terminal" and hang in the airport from 1pm until 9:30pm! When Carol and I finally arrived we went to our rented home in the "oversized" parking lot, what a site!

Because we had to bring everything, Carol and I had 6 pieces of luggage and backpacks! We got all of the luggage in the RV and hit the road. Within an hour we started to see the gigantic mountain range in the distance. I had no idea how big those mountains would be until we saw them. It was really cool to be driving at 10:15 at night and still somewhat light out. The average sunset was about 10:20pm! Our first night we had reservations at the Banff Tunnel Mountain Campground. We arrived hooked up, which consists of plugging in the electric cord, and connecting a water hose. Carol and I unpacked for about a half and hour and we were all set for a cocktail!

The next morning we had to be up early 6am. we had to be in Canmore just south of Banff to go our first activity....we went on a helicopter ride over the Mountains and one of the southern glaciers. It was a stunningly beautiful morning about 70 degrees and bright sunshine. We flew over the area that Brokeback Mountain was filmed and discovered that 90% of the movie was filmed within 100 feet of the road! We were done with this activity by 9am and then hit the road North on our way to Jasper National Park. We stopped for a few things in Banff and then continued on 1A North in hopes of seeing wild animials. Our first animail was a giant Elk with a full rack!

News from the Canadian Rockies

After spending 10 days in the Canadian Rockies, I will be spending my next several blogs concentrating on the wonderful observations and general "stuff" from our vacation. To get started, this is a picture from our 1st day when we took a helicopter ride over the lower Rockies near Canmore. What a cool way to start the vacation...as you can see, the weather was wonderful and that was the way it was for the entire trip except for last night when it poured (a sign that it was time to come home...). There were four of us on this trip, we rented an RV and just traveled the Banff, Jasper and Yoho National Parks, I have to say one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Stay tuned for more about the trip, as well as travel information...!