Banff

Today was the kind of day that makes you realise that you've been given enough gifts to last a lifetime and that asking for anything more is just greed talking.

I had a lot of misgivings and preconceptions about Banff. I expected it to be kitschy, expensive, and over rated. By the time I got to the town limits, I was in an absolutely foul mood and wondered if there was any point my being there at all. To enter Banff National Park (in which Banff is located), you need to pay an access fee of 10$ for a day or 65$ for a year for an individual or 130$ for a family. I decided that the annual pass would make more sense since it's good at all national parks across Canada. I asked the attendant if I was going to need a second pass for my motorhome, even if I was towing my car behind it and only one vehicle would be on park roads at a time. She said yes. That was sort of the proverbial straw for me as to dealing with Parks Canada. In order to stay at their grossly overpriced campgrounds I had to pay an additional 130$ per year? I decided right then and there that I was taking the Crowsnest Pass on Thursday and not going through Banff again.

But I talked to someone else at the Banff Information Centre and what she had to say was much more logical, that I didn't need a second pass. I realised then that Parks Canada employees are like a lot civil servants I work with and unable to see their jobs as anything but black and white. So if I get questioned for having just one pass, I'll just tell them that the people at the Banff info centre said I didn't need a second one.

My mood greatly improved then and one of the most amazing days of my life began.

Let's start at the beginning.

I stopped for a bit of a break on my almost 1.5 hour drive to Banff at Lacs des arcs:



I've always wanted to say: "I'm Rae. From Canmore." Non Royal Canadian Air Farce fans can just scratch their heads at that one. *ggl*



Entrance to Banff National Park



Welcome to Banff!



Banff Avenue



A lovely, eye-catching, sculpture on Banff Avenue



So, Banff. A compact, aesthetically pleasing but not kitshy, friendly town. The first thing that I noticed were gas prices; they were the same as in Calgary! Then I noticed all the signs announcing RV parking for two hours on the street and 12 hours (but no overnight) in special lots reserved for RVs. Then I noticed that all parking in Banff is free! I wouldn't want to take Miranda in there at the height of the tourist season, but today I would have had no problem finding a place for her and she would have been secure all day, without my having to beg for a place to park her while I explored. I therefore award Banff the distinction of being the first truly RV friendly place I've been to so far. I've never felt so welcome!

First order of business in Banff was pretty funny and goes to show that I'm living my real life and not on vacation. Yesterday, I managed to lose my ATM card. I'd had my previous card for 15 years and I wasn't able to hang on to my current card for more than a few months! So, off to the CIBC I went to get a new card. This illustrates one of the many reasons I love being with the CIBC; if a town has more than one banking institution there is usually a CIBC (unless you're in Quebec where the same can be said about Caisse Pops). I was therefore not surprised to find a CIBC right across the street from the lot where I parked.

That done, I went to the visitor's centre to raise hell about the park passes and to see if I could add anything to my day's itinerary, which contained just two items.

I wandered down Banff Avenue for a bit and then went to Gopher Avenue to visit the Whyte Museum for the sole purpose of viewing the Group of Seven et. al. exhibition. Yes, we finally get a bit of culture! LOL

Of all the members of the Group of Seven, A.Y. Jackson is my favourite.




There were also some lovely pieces by Japanese-Canadian artist Takao Tanabe, another favourite of mine. I couldn't believe I got to see this piece in person; it's my favourite of his!



There was more to the museum, but it was way too nice a day out to stay inside for long!

Next order of business was something I learned about at the info centre: the Sulphur Mountain Gondola. Even though riding a gondola was in violation of everyone of my instincts, I'd never done it and figured that I could survive the 14 minute round trip.

I didn't enjoy the trip at all, I'm afraid, even though the views were spectacular!






At the top, I continued up to the Cosmic Ray Station.











I have no problem being that high up when I'm on solid ground!

Coming back down on the gondola, I really impressed myself when I actually turned around and took this picture. EEP!



The ride down was a lot harder than the ride up as the first time around there had been people in the gondola with me and they were able to distract me.

Back on solid ground (and having lost fifteen years off my life), it was time to do the second item on my to-do list, something I found I'm not sure how. I got back onto the Transcanada Highway, then exited at the Bow Valley Parkway where I cruised along until I got to Johnston's Canyon. It features an amazing hike through a canyon, mostly on cantilevered walkways (non-scary; they're made of concrete and steel). There is a short hike to the lower falls, a longer one to the higher falls, and very long hike to pools of water known as the 'Inkpots.'











Making an attempt to reach the Inkpots was no small decision on my part. I'd already hiked 3km uphill to get to the higher falls and it was another 3km uphill to get to the Inkpots. Add to that the climb at Sulphur Mountain and the late hour of the day. This was a case where a good decision could only be made with firm knowledge of one's abilities. On flat terrain, I can hike 3km in about 30 minutes. Uphill, make that 45 minutes. Uphill and exhausted? Calculate an hour. So, that put me at the Ink Pots around 4. Add a bit of sight seeing, picture taking, and talking to people on the trail and I wouldn't be back at my car before 5:30. I was dressed for the weather, had enough supplies on me to face a 'worst case scenario', and knew that I was smart enough to turn around if I reached my limit. I set off and decided to reevaluate around 3:30. I'd just about had enough by this point, but, thankfully, some hikers came up from the Inkpots right around then and told me it was a downhill shot from where I was standing. I knew I'd have to climb back up again, but that after that I was looking at mainly downhill to get back to the car. I pushed on.

I'm so glad I did. :-)

The Inkpots







Doing the uphill hike up out of there, I had to keep reminding myself that I could not spend the night on the mountain. Someone was bound to question the car at the trail head and come in search of me! That would have been so humiliating! So, I pressed on and made it back to the trail head for bang on 5:30! There was an ice cream stand open now and I decided to treat myself to a double scoop cone! I've only just started to eat ice cream again and I have to say this cone was just fantastic! :-)

Driving back towards Banff, traffic came to a standstill on the parkway because of these three little guys:



Since I had an hour and a half to go before home and I felt that I'd earned a nice dinner out, I treated myself to salmon and chicken in Banff, then ambled back to my car. I had to stop to take this picture:



I call it 'Deer on Banff Avenue.'

Oh, wait. That name is taken!




I got home at 8:30; my longest day out as of yet and the first time I've been out after dark other than to go to the cinema!

One thing I didn't get to do today since I went to the Inkpots was to catch a glimpse of Lake Louise. I'll swing by there on Thursday on my way through the park.

I have two days left here. I had thought to go to Drumheller, but didn't realise that it's almost a five hour round trip drive. So, I'll save Drumheller for the spring. Tomorrow, I'll go into Calgary for supplies for Operation: Batteries and Wednesday I'll putter around at home, do laundry, pack, and plan my trip across the Rockies.

I can consider Banff to be the perfect cap to this first portion of my incredible journey. Now, it's a straight shot to the Osoyoos area (site of the only desert in Canada, not counting the Arctic) where I need to find a place to park my butt as I will be on call for a grape picking job as of Monday!

It seems that even good lives have no shortage of good days.

Calgary, My Enchanted Land, and the End of the Road?

Calgary

The only thing on my schedule for today was a visit of Fort Calgary. It's a small museum, but the exhibits about the NWMP and the history of Calgary are quite interesting. I was accosted at one point by a retired RCMP officer who proceeded to talk my ear off for about twenty minutes about his career, his uniform, Mountie training, career opportunities within the force, his son who is serving at the detachment in Inuvik, our mutual feelings about Ottawa vs. The West, and more. It was really interesting!

As I was about to leave the fort, the lady at the admissions desk called me back and gave me some information about another museum that might interest me that is only open tomorrow (more about that tomorrow *g*) and then she gave me information on a walking tour of downtown Calgary, a scenic detour on the way to a cemetery, details on how to find a particularly interesting gravestone, a brochure about a rock garden that is a must see, and, finally, a map illustrating filming locations in the Calgary area. Whew!

I did only part of the walking tour, which was mostly a gentle stroll down Stephen Avenue, Calgary's former main street. The architecture was exquisite!!! During a pre-WWI boom, a lot of Calgary's original wooden buildings were replaced by sandstone structures that really reflect the amount of wealth coming into the city at the time. The Doll Building was my favourite:



The Hudson's Bay store left me awestruck. It takes up a whole block!



I then returned to my car and proceeded to Spiller Avenue, from which she told me I should take the steepest side street I could find and that I would know why at the top:





Next on the list was the cemetery. There, I took a photograph of this grave:



You won't know who he is. Most people wouldn't. But he employed two people who you will know about, even if you didn't know that they spent some time working in Calgary and that they probably met up here, while working for this gentleman. History remembers these two men as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

The Reader Rock Garden was attached to the cemetery. I enjoyed clambering up and down the stone paths even if there wasn't much in bloom at this time of year.



It was two by this point and I had nothing else planned for the day. So, I took a gander at the movie locations map. You wouldn't believe the number of major Hollywood pictures filmed in the Calgary area, everything from Robin Williams' 'RV' to Clint Eastwood's 'Unforgiven' to Ang Lee's 'Brokeback Mountain' (a lot of which was filmed near the town on the outskirts of which I'm currently living).


My Enchanted Land

Until the late '90's, I could recognize a certain landscape, or a variation thereof, in numerous movies, but I didn't realise that it was truly one landscape from one region. It was a landscape of mountains, plateaus, and valleys; the perfect setting for everything from 'Legends of the Fall' to 'The Edge', movies set in a gentler time or about a rough wilderness. Then one day I watched the dueSouth episode 'Call of the Wild' and recognized this landscape in it. I did some research and discovered that my enchanted land is called Kananaskis country and it is in Alberta.

Why my enchanted land? There is a book I reread many times in my youth called 'Cat, Herself.' It tells the story of a family of tinkers in Scotland. Tinkers are travelers not unlike the full-time RVer. The main character, Cat, had a grand-mother who referred to Ben Loyal as her enchanted land. The expression stuck in my mind.

So, looking at the movie locations map today, I noticed a route marked the Kananaskis trail. It looked like perhaps three to four hours driving time total.

I wanted to go, but I hesitated. What if my enchanted land turned out to be two beautiful peaks surrounded by condos? Perhaps I should do what I did in 1998 when I purposely avoided Sherwood Forest, just leave it as a land out of dreams.

But I was so close. I decided to go.

I'll let just a few of the pictures I took tell the rest of the story.









The End of the Road?

There is so much work here in Alberta, more jobs than there are workers. From an employment point of view, this should be the end of the road for me until the spring. But I really don't think that Miranda could be made comfortable enough to endure a Calgary winter and I've endured enough miserable winters in the mobile home to know what I'd be getting into. But all these jobs! So, I'll confess that I'm looking, just for curiosity's sake, for an indoor place where I could park Miranda for the winter and live in her, like a heated garage or plane hangar.

To give you an idea of what the employment situation is like, let's go back for a moment to my very first morning in Alberta, back when I was in Lloydminster. I decided to treat myself to a Tim Horton's coffee before pushing off. I went in, ordered my coffee and muffin, and was about to leave when someone called to me. It was the manager. He wanted to know if I owned the RV outside and, if so, if I'd be interested in a couple of weeks worth of work.

I haven't shared that story because I felt no one would believe it. But the woman at the museum today did and she said she had a job for me for the winter if I wanted it.

That doesn't make actually looking for work particularly appealing.

Trials and Tribulations

I don't have any pictures to share at this time because my desktop computer isn't set up and hooking up the camera to the laptop is too fussy for the short time frame I have. So, enjoy all the bla bla bla and come back later for pics. :-)

Oh, I've written soooo much about the last almost week, but I need to save some material for a book! :-)

Here are some highlights from the past six days.


Friday August 29, 2008

-I successfully backed up into a busy street at rush hour as I couldn't very well sleep at my mechanic's. No one was injured during this impressive feat of driving. Thank you to David for stopping traffic!

-After spending several hours loading STUFF into the coach, I took off for a sports arena a few blocks from the house to spend my first night as an urban boondocker. The cats took to the RV immediately and slept good nights. Mom was too exhausted to fuss and had a good night, too. The arena wound up being quiet and dark. I didn't suffer for lack of 120V current and I really, really, really enjoyed being able to take a hot shower!


Saturday August 30, 2008

-Up at six, worked non stop, got the house emptied and the RV stuffed by noon, right on schedule.

-Was screwed over by Vidéotron one last time.

-Arrived at the campground absolutely drained and overwhelmed.

-Circled my loop, planned my entry into the site, came back, pulled straight into an empty site, and unhooked my toad, which is where:

Rae learns a very important lesson about towing

Watch where your feet are. The tow bars are heavy and purple toes are NOT a fashion statement.

Toes weren't broken, so I ignored the throbbing pain down there and moved the toad out of the way. Moved the coach back, forward, and back again, getting it into the campsite in one shot. Eyewitness testimony states that I seemed to have been doing it my entire life. Which is where:

Rae discovers that backing up perfectly (in one try) into a campsite is actually not the most important consideration at that time

As it turned out, I had circled my loop and reentered another one. I was in the wrong site. But, in my defense, both sites had neighbours with a blue tent AND both sites were of the same shape as I'd been told to look for!

A very nice park official checked to see if the site would be available for the five nights I was staying. It was. I could stay.

The coach was stuffed to the gills, I was overwhelmed, and just about burst into tears when I saw how much work I had ahead of me. So, I said *expletive deleted* that and went out for a nice dinner during which I formulated a plan of attack.

I slept the sleep of the dead. Never mind that the mattress is really too thick and that I can barely roll over. I was on my own mattress with my feather duvet and pillows. The cats were by my side. I could hear crickets outside. The wind was whispering a lullaby. I was home.


Sunday August 31, 2008

I slept so late I was disoriented upon waking up. I mean, the day is half gone by the time 9:30 arrives!

I hadn't been able to plug in my coach on Saturday since the prongs on my cord didn't match the holes in the electrical post. So, I just dragged the coffee maker and toaster out onto the picnic table.

A few hours later, as order begins to emerge from the chaos that was the basement:

Rae finds something that no longer makes it necessary for her to run an extension cord from her electrical post to the coffee maker set on a picnic table.

She believes it's a 'cheater adapter.' Possibly. Whatever it is called, it's an adapter. She now has 15AMP service!

One of the most useful things I did on Sunday was label a tote TOWING and put in it all the odd bits that I use for towing.

I took the afternoon off to get organizational stuff at Wal-mart's, then I head off to a friend's for a Labour Day BBQ. Her mom gave me a hibachi she had lying around in the shed and I am now able to char my own barbecue sauced bird!


Monday September 1, 2008

I was spending the day with a friend so I woke up early and attacked the basement. I got it so well sorted and organized that it is no longer stuffed to the gills!

At some point during this day:

Rae has a real light bulb moment involving a too highly chlorinated fresh water holding tank

"Gee the water is caustic. I can't wait to empty the tank and put in fresh water. Waitaminute. The tank is only a third full. Maybe I can use the new hose I bought yesterday at Wal-mart at a major discount and top up the tank with fresh, unchlorinated, water and dilute what's left?"


Tuesday September 2, 2008

WORK! I finalised all my files and opened cases and packed since I knew Wednesday would be a wash.

A separate entry will follow about the evening.

Which brings us to today, Wednesday September 3, 2008

I did some real work, spent some time on line, shed copious tears, received and gave a ton of hugs, and left the way I've always dreamt of leaving a place, with a tug of regret.

Wardrobe Woes

Miranda's wardrobe is surprisingly useless for a full-timer. Blame it on the sliding doors. If I had doors that opened outwards, I could have done something like Andy Baird did in his rigs, that is put in plastic drawers to fill in the space. Instead, I have to contend with doors that eat up a surprising amount of interior space. I will put in at least one drawer unit, but it will have to be quite skinny.

When retirees move into a full-timing rig, they can usually downsize their clothing since they know they'll be doing mostly casual things in mostly warm climates. I don't have that luxury. I'm still going to go through four seasons and I have no idea what sort of scenarios I'm going to encounter. It therefore doesn't make sense to get rid of anything I've worn in the last year except for pieces that are definitely too big for me now.

I divided my wardrobe into three: winter, summer, and inbetween. Since I'm leaving at the beginning of September, I can expect to wear summer clothes for at least that month, but will want ready access to the inbetween items, which include longer-sleeved tops and heavier skirts. The distinctly winter items--corduroy skirts, heavy knit tops, coats, boots, hats, etc. went into two rubber totes that fit nicely in the basement. I'll need to figure out how to squeeze the summer things into the wardrobe using the hanging and drawer space I have available to me. As for the inbetween stuff, I want it at the ready for the first chilly morning.

So, I just spent a half hour staring at both my closets (yes, both, I'm in suuuch trouble, LOL!) and realised that I hadn't figured out yet where I'm putting my suitcases. Yes, I'm taking my suitcases with me since I plan on doing one round trip air flight per year to Montreal to visit my family.

The three suitcases nestle in each other, so there's only the big one to worry about, size-wise, and it should fit on the wardrobe's shelf if I measure things correctly. I put the smaller suitcase in it and stuffed it with rolled up long-sleeved inbetween tops:



I then closed up the small suitcase and laid on top the dressier clothes I own that would be suitable for interviews or office jobs. They'll be out of the way, but stay reasonably unwrinkled.



I finished by stuffing the suitcase with socks and tights.

I will most definitely need to hang some things, so I suspect I'll end up using up as much of the wardrobe for drawers as I can, and then put up hooks in the entrance and study for hanging the coats and shawls I'm using at the time. I'll hang the other coats in the wardrobe in the dead space between the drawers where the doors intersect. I'll need to remove the drawer units to get at the coats, so that will be fine for rotating storage.

More Officialisms

I'm houseless (but not homeless) as of 1 September. My landlords were happy to accommodate my request to break my lease a month early (yaaaaaaay).

Then, I'll be jobless as of 4 September. My supervisor signed the first batch of papers today.

I now have just about all of September to get out west. The beauty of having your home with you and boondocking most of the way (ie. not paying for a campsite) is that it doesn't cost any more to take four weeks to cross the country than to take one week. You'd have had to eat during those four weeks anyway and you would have done the same amount of mileage in one week or four. I just need to learn to slow down and not put in insane driving days, something I suspect will come naturally to me when the time comes.

Excited, so very excited.