Thursday, June 15, 2023: Finally in the Rocky Mountains!
Info:
The province of Alberta is known as Wild Rose Country. Pale pink roses grow everywhere and wrap the landscape in their fragrance.
Banff is a small town in the province of Alberta and is located in the east of the Rocky Mountains about 140 km west of Calgary at 1400 m above sea level.
Banff National Park is the oldest national park in Canada and had only 26 km2 when it was established in 1885. Today it covers 6,641 km2 and attracts over four million visitors a year.
My opinion:
When I was here 35 years ago, Banff was a village and the national park was visited by many people – but no comparison to today. Without online reservation nothing works anymore, and on weekends it can happen that all campsites are booked out long before.
Apart from that, Banff has a reputation for people looking in one direction and being amazed. And then you turn around, look in the other direction and can’t help but be amazed. If you walk ten meters further and look around, you can’t help but be amazed. And when you turn around …
That’s exactly what Banff is like.
Diary:
I arrived in Banff in sunshine. And could not help but be amazed.
Tunnel Mountain Village Campground is located in the middle of the forest. Elks graze between the tents and campers. I was strongly warned about the elk cows when checking in, they are particularly aggressive at the moment because they have young. Bears have also been spotted recently, so the rangers’ instructions were very clear – and anyone who doesn’t comply has to leave the campsite. Foxes kept scurrying by, and a squirrel loudly insulted me every time I dared to open Annie Way’s sliding door in the early morning.
In the town of Banff I finally bought a Bearspray. It is now ready to hand and in its original packaging in Annie Way’s shoe box on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
By the way, there is a great public bus system that goes to all the campgrounds. If you get in at a campground and drive to Banff, you pay nothing. Only the continuing buses and the return trip have to be paid – a whole two Canadian dollars (1.40 €).
There are so many things to see and so much to experience in Banff that you can’t do it all anyway. After a night with a lot of rain, the mountains were covered with snow the next morning and looked even more beautiful. A day pass, which also allows you to take the bus to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, costs the equivalent of €17. Everything is being done to keep car traffic in check – with success.
Moraine Lake is even more spectacular than Lake Louise and has the advantage that you can only get there by bus, which means fewer people.
Internet is not really a reason for joy in the mountains and was only available in homeopathic doses at the campsite. So I went to the Visitor Center in town to inquire about where I could upload something. A minute later I was sitting at a desk in the Visitor Center, and the ladies and gentlemen apologized that the internet was so slow. It actually took me 45 minutes to get the podcast up on cba, but still, it worked.
Donna and Paul came from Colorado and will spend two weeks with me. They were stopped at the border for unexplained reasons. I promised not to tell anyone why. I will keep this promise.
By the way, there is a website where Canadians talk about their experiences with US citizens. They find it particularly funny that many still believe they can enter Canada without a passport …
I have known Paul and Donna for 35 years. With them, too, it was as if we had just met – the only difference being that we had more to tell each other. The two of them visited me several times for some weeks in Leonding and stayed with me. I stayed three days with them in Colorado when I spent four weeks traveling through the Rockies in 2001 with my then eleven year old son. We kept in touch via e-mails and telephone calls. It is an incredible joy to spend time with them again.
At Tunnel Mountain Village Campground, not far from Annie Way, was a campervan with German license plates. A couple with two young children are spending nine months traveling across North America. Since they are also heading to Alaska, we have exchanged phone numbers and are in touch via WhatsApp – if there is wifi.
The Rocky Mountains are – like the Alps and the Himalayas – very young mountains, which is why they are still so high. They are still growing, but erosion is stronger than uplift. What makes the Rocky Mountains so special are the spectacular shapes of the mountains and the vastness, which makes them look completely different from the Alps. They are forested up to high altitudes. Many mountains have quartz sandstone at the base, then comes shale and limestone at the very top. The forests can grow on the sandstone.
And I could not help but be amazed …