Home on The Road

Farewell, Rockies. Farewell. 

Monday of our journey kind of felt like "the end" of our great adventure. In order to deliver the RV back in Missoula on Wednesday by 11am, we had to seriously book it. Our hurried farewells to the Canadian Rockies were in beautiful Canmore where we camped three times and ran lots of errands. Seriously, I'll never be content with the views from my local Safeway ever again. The views from the opposite direction were just as amazing. 

The sky was incredibly CLEAR (of course, just when we had to leave) but it made for a nice drive through Southwestern Alberta. We had heard of the Calgary, Alberta Roundup and Rodeo before, but driving through that area, it totally made sense - horses everywhere! 

I couldn't catch any pictures of the horses, but it was an amazing expanse of wide open prairies with snow covered peaks doting the horizon. I could imagine thousands of buffalo stampeding across the range. 

As we headed for Waterton National Park (the Canadian side of Glacier NP) for the night, we watched the mountains rise up before us on the horizon. We got to the campsite just outside of the park during the afternoon and I caught up on housekeeping - cleaning and laundry while Ada and Colin played at the park. Then we took an evening stroll in Waterton before dinner. It's pretty quaint! 

(Prince of Wales Hotel looking rather majestic) 

(About to stroll through Waterton) 

(The view of the lake from the great hall in  the hotel. Pretty swank. I chatted with a slightly tipsy couple who invite me to have some wine with them. I totally would have if daddy and the kids weren't waiting!) 

Back at camp, we enjoyed a tasty dinner, beautiful views, an amazing sunset, bathing our two babies and some of the most incredible stars we've ever seen.

 

By Monday night, we had been traveling for a solid week, and the RV was really starting to feel like home. From grocery shopping, to doing laundry, to bathing the kids, it was truly like home away from home. I was actually sad our trip was coming to an end. But, Tuesday dispelled those feelings...more on that next time! 

Glaciers and Patience

This post is coming three weeks after the fact. I quickly learned how hard it was to blog every day during our Canadian Rockies trip. We didn't always have internet and I didn't always have the energy at the end of the day. But, I wanted to finish writing about our journey, so here are few more humble posts of our trip. OXOX - BG

Sunday was one of the more interesting, yet difficult days of our Canadian Rockies Adventure. The sun rose with the clearest skies we had seen in a few days - perfect for our drive back down the Ice Field Parkway! 

(One of the picture stops we made. Don't worry, our RV and babies were within feet of us. We didn't abandon them for a photo op!)

After several delays, we FINALLY reached the Columbia Ice Fields visitor center at midday. By that point we were all starving, so we had lunch in the parking lot with views of Athabasca Glacier from our windows. I have to say, that is one of my favorite aspects of traveling by RV. We could pull over ANYWHERE, turn on the generator and have lunch and a spot of hot tea or cocoa without stepping foot inside a restaurant or cafe. So convenient!

The Columbia Icefields is a network of eight glaciers sitting on the continental divide. They were discovered in 1898, and tourism in the area has been around since the early 1900's.

(One of the old snowmobiles on display from the olden days.)

Brewster Co. runs an assortment of tours of the glaciers. We did their family friendly tour to Athabasca Glacier. It entails riding on a Greyhound type bus from the visitor center out to the snow coach depot, then another ride on the enormous snow coach out onto the ice, with a QUICK step onto the ice for pictures and a look around before getting back on the snow coach, back to the depot, then back to the visitor center. All told, we spent 90% of the tour time going back and forth and very little time on the ice. My inner traveler and adventurer was BUMMED. C'mon, I've hiked up and down a glacier twice in New Zealand! But my inner momma bear wasn't about to do ANYTHING to potentiallly put my precious babies down a crevasse. So! My conflicting emotions hashed it out and I had a great time! The snow coach ride was a bit terrifying, since it goes down a 34% grade hill to get to the ice.

(Snow Coach coming back to the depot. Its max speed is 11mph!)

(Each Snow Coach costs a whopping 1.3 Million! It is a six, all wheel drive vehicle with anti-locking breaks. They are actually, really safe!) 

(We had a really great and engaging Canadian guide who gave us lots of information on the history of the Columbia Icefield and Athabasca Glacier, the surrounding terrain and geology, the history of tourism in the area, information and statistics on the Snow Coaches, etc. I found it all so interesting that I bought two books in the gift shop. By the way, can you spot Big Sis?) 

(Athabasca Glacier! Over 3.5 miles long and over 900 feet deep at its deepest point! The wind that swept down the glacier was bone chillingly cold! Good thing we only had 15 mins on the ice!

(Colin and I hiked Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand on our honeymoon, so it was great to see a new glacier together and to compare our experiences. The girls didn't mind it. Big Sis actually fell asleep!)

After the tour, we had to make our way back to Canmore where we would be staying that night. It was a gorgeous drive, but exhausting. I lost count how many glaciers I saw and how many beautiful lakes we drove past. I seriously felt like I was having visual overload. 

(Suffering from visual overload. Exhausting!)

I REALLY wanted a photo of our family by at least one of the beautiful glacier lakes, so we planned to stop in Lake Louise for a picture. Unfortunately, the girls barely napped on the way there, and so by the time we got to Lake Louise, the girls had HAD IT with traveling that day. Ada was delirious! We let her walk down to the pier (seen below) and I wouldn't have been surprised if she jumped in the lake. At least she was silly tired and not screaming tired. 

(Lake Louise Family Photo Fail! We have some better ones, but this one will always be my abiding memory! Ada was giddy with exhaustion dilerium!)

So, after our pitiful photo attempts and crazy fast stop in Lake Louise, we piled back into the RV, happy that our campsite and hot dinner were only an hour away....Then we hit bumper to bumper construction traffic. Oh BOY. 

(Then traffic came to a grinding HALT!)

This is when Little Sis lost all of her patience. I was able to figure out a detour via a back road that was pretty easy to get to, (thank you, Google maps!) so we made a break for it and left the traffic behind. After two additional feeding stops to calm down the baby, we pulled into our campsite at 8:30pm, the latest ever. Whew, what a day! I'm glad we did the glacier tour, but we should have broken up the day a little better for the girls' sake. The exhaustion tested everyone's patience, and since that time, I've noticed Colin asking for patience in dealing with the kids when we say our night prayers. It was an tiring, trying, beautiful and amazing day that we will always remember.