July 13th: Calgary and Banff National Park (Day 21)

We woke early and started making breakfast while we broke camp. The plan was yummy omelets with the left over veggies from Cheri’s fajitas but we ran out of Coleman fuel after the coffee was done. This turned out to be interesting because the closest and only place for breakfast turned out to be a Café Louisette’s owned by a Canadian born man whose mother was from new Orleans. He was living in Mississippi when Katrina hit and had the only house left standing, albeit without a roof, rescued 6 days later, still has $60,000 in insurance checks that can’t be cashed because made out to 5-6 different entities. Cat 4 0r 5? Ask NASA! Very interesting.

Banff National Park is awesome, most of the little towns (Banff, Canmore, etc.)
are just shopping centers in the woods but the park is great. We picnicked near a very cold, blue stream that was about 6 feet deep but looked much shallower because of how clear the water was. We skipped a really long line of cars waiting to buy park passes, then walked right up to a window in Banff and bought one. We got one of the last 3 tent spots at Lake Louise. The campsite was awesome and was surrounded by an electric fence to keep the grizzlies out(just the tent area). There was an amazing river running very fast through the park just outside of the campground. We got quite a show from the ground hogs, which must be mating because we watched one stand on his hind legs on a stump with his hands crossed in front of him singing until a female finally came up to listen. After that...what happens in Banff, stays in Banff. We took the dogs for a walk through one of the many pedestrian gates of the electric fence (basically a handle wrapped in a few layers of plastic was used to open the gate) to walk down the river to the bridge where we entered the tent area. We had a campfire dinner, washed up the dishes and headed to bed.

Pictures for Day 21