Jun 25 2008
RV Adventure, Day 9: Second day at Banff National Park
(Note: No, we are not dead! We have arrived in Vancouver and are having a blast, but WiFi has been tough to find so I’m a bit behind updating the blog. I’m trying to catch up tonight- Wednesday)
Day 9: Second day at Banff National Park.
Again, we awoke to great weather. Given the dismal report on the recent weather from the locals, we were apparently very lucky to have arrived to the weather we were receiving.
After breakfast we decided that we’d have a bit of a slower today given the hectic pace of yesterday. My daughter was excited about riding the Banff transit system as each of the busses were animal themed - there was a Wolf bus, a Mountain Goat bus, Grizzly Bear, and Elk bus. We split up at the campsite and my wife indulged her with a ride into town while me and my son drove in shortly afterwards.
We wandered through town again. Being Saturday it was already much busier then it had been earlier on Thursday and Friday (the area was swamped with tour busses and rental motor-homes), so it was nice that we had done most our browsing already and didn’t need to fight the crowds. We checked out a few more stores and then went down to the waterfront to let the kids play for a while and burn off some energy.
Our only real goal for today was to visit the Banff upper hot springs - a pool that is fed by natural hot springs that emanate from the mountains themselves, and once we left the pool we took the short drive to the springs which were actually situated right next to the tramway we had visited yesterday.
I was quite surprised at the cost of the hot springs admission, but there was a discounted family pass for $22 - still a fairly stiff cost for what amounted to a swim, but the novelty of it being a naturally fed hot spring was what justified the extra cost, as well as the tourist-trap status.
The actual pool itself was quite enjoyable at about 38c (103′ish F?), although the weather had warmed up to a level where it became uncomfortable to be in the pool for more then about 10 minutes at a time. We took turns getting in and then sitting up on the decks to cool off. I can’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed in the level of repair that the actual pool area was in - there was several areas where masonry was cracked and literally falling apart, and some areas of the pool showed a lack of care.
We spent about 2 hours total at the hot springs and then headed back to the campground. Our GPS was once again confident that it needed to take us off the beaten path so I decided to indulge it’s insistence for us to “Turn left!” at one point and it took us up into a residential area. I can’t say that this wasn’t interesting as the architecture of many houses in the Banff area is unique, but it seemed that the GPS was completely brain-dead as it started to take us in a perpetual loop, apparently unable to find the blatantly obvious route back to the Tunnel Mountain campground where we were staying. Of course, we knew how to get there (and the city has excellent signage) so we eventually ignored it’s insistence to drive in circles and got back en-route, at which point the GPS came out of it’s daze and routed us directly to the campground.
We were back at the campground early, and I can’t say that this wasn’t welcome - we had a relaxing evening to unwind and fix a great dinner.
Shortly after dinner there was a coyote that strolled through camp - our kids thought it was quite the sight, and we managed to snap a few excellent pictures before it sauntered back into the mountains behind the campground.
It began to cloud over as we settled in for the evening - perhaps our luck with the weather was running out, and a quick glance at the forecast confirmed that we were due for some rain overnight and into the next morning. Since we were leaving in the morning I decided to fold up all of our camp chairs and stow them, and get everything else under the awning - just in case.
That was a good decision.
I see you are quickly learning the short comings of the Garmin Auto-routing. It makes poor decisions and takes you where there are no roads. Thats why I went to TomTom for an automotive GPS. Unfortunately the map data that Garmin uses is severely out of date causing a variety of issues on its own. But on top of it, they have trails marked as roads or vice-versa which in turn causes the GPS to make some incredibly stupid and poor choices to get you from point A to point B. And their algorithm for calculating shortest, fastest or avoidance routes is just retarded. Don’t get me wrong, I love my handheld Garmin for geocaching when I am off road and hiking through the bush. But for on-road activity it sucks. I find we use the TomTom along with the Garmin now to navigate to a destination on-road, then once the road ends, then Garmin can take over. I would like to see Garmin fix these issues but sadly it has been many years, and it seems they are no closer to fixing it.
Yeah, I can’t say that we aren’t dissapointed sometimes in the routing, and there is certainly some questionable map information (coming through Calgary it had absolutely no idea where we were at one point) but it gets the job done - it took us through downtown Vancouver perfectly last night right to the beach and back.
Of course there is that small technicality that it seems to want us to take a “Dukes of Hazard” leap off the lions gate bridge into our campsite on occasion, but hey, one must keep some level of common sense when using these things eh? :-)
You obviously haven’t met some of the cachers we have. Where the Dukes method is the preferred method. :-)
Hi Mark & Christie and kids…
Enjoying read the blog from time to time…hope you get the WiFi goin again, whatever that is…lol!
I especially mused to read of your reaction to Manitoba and Sask!!… which are roughly the same (pun intended) sort of a dust bowl w live in…lol, for those of you not lucky enough to experience the bliss, but..to me it’s home!
Sorry to read about your tire troubles Mark & glad you did not get them in Regina where they seemly wanted to hose you! Cheaper where you get them later!…Glad you changed them too, as they are thee most important component on a vehicle…well tires and BREAKS!
Take CARE & always drive safe!
Robyn