Saturday, June 1, 2013

RV Driving Alberta .. Not for the Faint of Heart!!!

We left Golden in the rain ... in fact, it rained all day.  That doesn't bother me as much as all the snow!! We headed to Banff National Park in the Rocky Mountains.  It was a LONG day on narrow curvy roads ... and I don't think I have ever gone over so many mountain passes in my life!!!  There were several 10% grades which were scary, but my RV handled it perfectly ... except for the big bump that put me in the other lane.  THEN Dan told me what those "mountain" signs were ... it meant BIG bumps in the road!!
Lac Louise (Lake Louise) was even scarier ... when I saw Dan turn up the road with the sign that said no big trailers or trucks, my hands were frozen to the wheel ... I couldn't even grab the radio and protest before we were at the top.
This is a crazy beautiful lake ... if I had my landscape lens (you know, the one I bought for this trip and left home??) you would have seen lots of clouds on the mountains.
On the way out, we stopped (on a curve ... eek!!) to see these two brutes munching away not 60 feet from us.  I sooooo wanted to jump out and get some pictures, but my little camera had to do this time.  They are Black Bears and a LOT bigger than they look here!!!
Further on up the crazy wet road, I was really getting worried about it starting to snow!!   At the top, this lake was still frozen!!  It was spectacular!!!  Check out Dan's blog for his pictures!!
This is my rig parked at the top on a steep hill ... when Dan says, can your dogs climb up in the drivers seat and hit the brake release???  Holy cow!!!  I don't know, but I went running back to find out.  Now I use the clothespin trick ... clip it on under the brake release and it can't be pushed!!  Chance Tip #25!!
This is where we came from .. and where my rig would have gone had the brake release been hit!!
Further on, more snow!!!  This was the Athabasca Glacier ice field.  These huge buses take tour groups up across the actual glacier, as you can see below.  Yup ... still raining!!
Here's two of the buses crossing the ice field.  They go up and they come down ... not too exciting!!
Here's the buggy they USED to ride in ... now THIS might be exciting!!!

We finally landed in Hinton ... got fuel and hit Camp Walmart for the night.  Still raining .... as you might guess, they don't have a water shortage around here!!

Tomorrow ... Dawson Creek

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