Beyond Donald.. landslides and ATMs

The drive today started with the most amazing section along a broad wooded valley with an active swollen river, serenity punctuated only by the sudden bellow of a long TransCanada train. The whole scene was overlooked by an imposing snow capped mountain range. It was fine and sunny and the air was full of drifting dandelion seeds. We had left really late due to trying to keep this blog up to date. Anyone who has kept a blog will know that they require a lot of time and effort.

Anyway, all was good until we came to roadworks. The man in orange asked us our destination.. 

The nasty man in orange

"Banff" we announced. "Not today" he retorted, "the road's closed due to a landslide and it will take two days to clear..." After watching our disappointment sink in for about 5 seconds he continued with a suddenly brighter tone, "but if you really want to get there today, take a right and go via Radium Springs" 

This guy really had a knack for breaking good news- the medical equivalent would be "you've got cancer and you will die from it.... Unless of course you elect for treatment; it's totally curable"

So Radium Springs is now on our itinerary.. Bring on the spontaneity!

They must be religious here in Radium Springs

An arty shot of the back of our RV juxtaposed on the real view

  In Radium Springs we had several unsuccessful encounters with all three of the ATMs in town. Our requests for our own money were declined for different reasons... Provider unavailable, Transaction error and Unspecified error. A very expensive phone call to Ozforex gave no answers. We filled up with petrol and moved on.

1923

Modern Day

The drive to Banff was unremarkable except for the remarkable scenery. The views were spectacular. I was really glad that W was GoPro-ing the whole trip. There will be some amazing shots, and I'm not sure if we will have the opportunity to return to Canada, so it will be great to have this record.

From the GoPro. This is low res. The actual images are HD

We entered Banff by the wrong route on account of incredibly poor and misleading signage reminiscent of Australia's non-tourist friendly signs of the 1980s. We parked (tightly) in an RV parking area after an embarrassing circuit of the non-RV friendly Safeway carpark.

We saw this too late. It was a tight circuit and we were very conspicuous.

It was only after we had entered that I saw the sign telling us we were not welcome! We were given much helpful information at the tourist information centre.

Unfortunately the unprecedented amount of snow still present meant that many of the summer walks were closed. Nevertheless there was plenty to do.

We had some more money conniptions here. An ATM in the service station promised $220 then delivered $180 only along with a "Dispensing Error" notice. The machine then said "Our of Service" and then reset itself, promising the world to the next punter. I warned the attendants who looked totally disinterested and shrugged. They actually looked as if they didn't understand English, but they couldn't have conveyed their unhelpful attitude any better.

We enjoyed a Starbucks coffee and then had a lovely meander along the river, bathed in warm evening sunshine - it was quite balmy today and apparently their first warm day this year.

Viv passes some German tourists in Banff

The beautiful Bow River in Banff

Wow!

We found our RV park and settled in. After a cooked meal we enjoyed an in-house movie courtesy of iTunes ("The Indie Games" - I recommend it as an informative and entertaining insight into the world of independent computer game development and as a character study of the young people who create the games). We had big plans for tomorrow, so we needed to start the day with a bang.. an early start.