Dateline: Banff, Alberta. The drive here from Lethbridge was pleasant, if not overwhelmingly scenic. Over the years what was once mostly two-lane road has become four-lane divided highway, except through a couple of small towns. In this part of the world “four-lane divided” does not equal “freeway” or “interstate-quality.” A four-lane divided road still has side roads coming into it without overpasses or merge ramps. Still, it is one heck of a lot better than two-lane undivided.
The Alberta highway speed limit is mostly 110 kph, which equals roughly 66 mph and, like in the States, folks push the envelope by 5-10 mph. The quick-and-dirty way to convert kph into mph is to multiply by .6, which fortunately I can do mentally.
One really fine thing we discovered on this trip is a way to bypass Calgary to the south and west on roads numbered 22X and 22 – this constitutes a great improvement over the old way that went through Calgary on the city streets. We always felt there should be a way to avoid Calgary and now one exists. Stampede is going on so avoiding Calgary traffic was a real plus.
The weather up this way isn’t winning prizes. We’ve managed to get rained on at least some everyday, including today. In my blog I cited a long-range forecaster who predicted “a year without summer” across the north central and northeast U.S. and Canada. The Canadian Rockies do get substantial summer rain anyway, so we may be here for two weeks and see relatively little sun.
The scenery here in Banff is spectacular, there is no other word for it. Really tall, sheer, dramatic gray granite mountains completely surround the valley of the Bow River, many still have snow or glaciers on them. We have been coming back here for at least 30 years, and we love it. This is bear and elk country; we passed a herd of maybe 10 elk a couple of miles from the RV campground before we even checked in. Parks Canada now takes campsite reservations which is very handy, we arrived knowing we had a site for the week we wanted.
