July 26, 2011 - Banff to Waterton Lakes Park

It rained all night long last night. The Bear and Peaches had two major running, jumping, hissing, squalling fights during the night. So, Jimmy and I did not sleep as well as I would have wished we could have given that we are leaving to head south to Waterton Lakes National Park today. We had our breakfast, our baths, got dressed and started to gear up to get into the rain to hook up the car and leave Banff. It may have been a miracle, or it might just have been the timing. Either way, it quit raining long enough for us to get the coach unhooked from power and the car hooked up to tow it down the highway.

There was nothing really exciting about the ride to Waterton. When we arrived at the campground, the young lady looked at the coach and asked me “how long is your vehicle?” I told her that it was about 42 feet long, not counting the Jeep which we would be unhooking. We had booked on line and their system showed that the only thing that was available was a space with no electricity, water or sewer. That is actually fine for us since we have a generator, the water tank was full and the black and gray tanks were empty. Apparently, though, they didn’t really have a space in the no hookups area which would accommodate a vehicle of our size. Luckily, they had had some early departures which made available a space for us with full hookups. So, we unhooked the car and I led Jimmy on a very circuitous drive around the campground to find space B-40. We were surprised to find 50 amp service (vs. the 30 amp service that most parks in Canada offer). There is water convenient to the coach. However, the sewer connection is in the middle of the space on which the coach is parked. I think most people who come here use trailers and it is fairly easy to use their set up for sewer. We would have to crawl under the coach and hook up the sewer hose – or we would have to put the discharge end of the sewer hose in the hole and try to not run over the rest of the hose when we got into the space. We just didn’t try to hook up sewer. Even if we had needed to dump the tanks, we are one space away from the bath house!!!!

And, we saw Rocky Mountain Deer and prairie dogs right in the campground. The deer are everywhere in the city of Waterton. The last time we were here, we were just amazed by the deer in the park area across from the ice cream place. She had just made herself at home. We saw a minimum of 6 deer in the campground, and four of them were bucks. The Bear had noticed the prairie dogs when we drove in. He didn’t really bark at them, but he got really attentive.

Before we could leave to go into town and on the two drives which we wanted to do, Jimmy rinsed off the Jeep. Since it had been raining when we left Banff, we were not able to put the cover on, so it was filthy. Once he was finished with that, we headed into town to check out the schedule for the boat tours of the lake. We decided to do the 10 am sailing since the lady at the ticket office said that we could just park the coach in one of their bus spaces while we were on the tour.

Our two excursions were to Cameron Lake (about a 16 km drive) and to Red Rock Canyon. When we reached Cameron Lake, we saw signs advising that the lake actually went into the USA, but they did not recommend hiking that far. The other signs said that the lake area was prime bear territory. We did not go all of the way to the US border at the lake, nor did we see any of the vaunted bear!!!

So, off we headed to Red Rock Canyon. This drive is supposed to be prime animal territory. All the way to the end of the drive, we saw not one animal! The canyon itself was fascinating – well, what little we saw of it was fascinating. The wind had been blowing really hard until we got to the canyon at the end of the road. Then it quit. And, the mosquitos which are large enough to carry off a small animal were out in force. One man who was walking out of the canyon trail had dead mosquitoes all over him. So, we did not do the hike around the trail. Rather, we got back in the Jeep to make the return trip. We hoped that it had gotten late enough that at least one deer would have come into the meadows. What a surprise we got when we left the parking lot only to see a great big brown bear eating flowers and stuff on the side of the road. This was the closest either of us have ever been to a real bear in the wild. I took lots of pictures of the bear, but not as many as I would have liked. There were, however, other people in queue who also wanted to see the bear. So, we shared and continued on. The only other animal sighting until we got back to Waterton was a pair of deer feeding among the Aspen trees on the side of the road.



But, when we got back to Waterton, we went back down to the harbor so that Jimmy could check where he would be able to park the coach. There was a doe feeding at the entrance to the harbor. A young man with a dog was on the other side of the street. That dog was ready to take on that deer. The deer didn’t even seem to notice the dog. She ate until she was finished in that area. She then just casually walked across the street. The young many had to pull his dog back to keep the dog from attacking the deer.

Tomorrow morning we will take the tour on the lake and then head back to St. Mary’s for a couple of nights so that we can make the Going to the Sun Road ride one more time. So, there should be good pictures from the boat tour!!!

More tomorrow.