Saturday, May 22, 2010

Now we are in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, the last town before the Banff National Park. We found a neat RV park that is in the trees. The town has a quilt store that I spent 1 hour in. Then Daddy went to the libray to pull up his email. There is no internet coverage at the RV Park.
Banff is Canada's oldest National Park. It is 259 square miles of mountains, glaciers, high moraine lakes and rushing rivers. The 2 mountains are Sulphur Mountain which is black in color because of its minerals; and Rundle Mountain, which is a fin shaped mountain turned on its side. They have a road called Tunnel Mountain, which is a misnomer because the tunnel was never built. We found the Fairmount Hotel where we stayed 6 years ago in August when the flowers were in full bloom. Now there is still snow, but it is still beautiful. We walked the trails above the Bow River to see the 2 waterfalls. The walls on both sides are steep and someone threw an acoustic guitar down , and it was laying about 6 foot above the river.
The highway to Banff and Lake Louise have special large animal overpasses made of 2 tunnels for the highway cars and sod, shrubs and trees on top of the tunnels for the animals to be able to cross the highway without getting hit or killed. Most of the animals that are hit by cars usually end up dying shortly after. This prevents that from happening. They have built 23 of these special overpasses between Banff and Lake Louise. There are hidden cameras to see if the animals are using them. They have found at least 11 species of the animals are using them. Supposedly, you can go online to the National Parks System to view it. I'll have to check it out when I'm finished with the blog tonight.
We walked around the town of Banff and Lake Louise. They are just upscaled resorts where everything is so overpriced. Their big tourist time is in the summer. But, there were a lot of tourists here now.