Day 11

Today was another long driving day. We woke up a bit late after the events of yesterday. Grant woke up saying that he wanted to see a pond to look for some deer, and we decided to go to Lake Louise. This is a gorgeous alpine lake that sits next to a French Chateau or something. There were a ton of International tourists there. We took a short walk around the lake and then went back to hitch up the trailer. Alex's eye looks better today. The swelling has gone down and the redness seems to have remained constant. Only problem is now she seems to be running a fever. Dangit. Hopefully the fever is from a runny nose she has because her eye definitely looks better. We hitched up the trailer and as we were driving out I noticed a funny brown figure in a field off the road. A HUGE boar grizzly was out there digging up grubs and such. We stopped and watched him for a while. Some tourist buses noticed we were stopped and pulled over and began watching too. We then left and drove the Icefield parkway that connects Banff and Jasper national parks. This is an incredible drive. It follows the streams and gorges along the Canadian Rockies, and you are shadowed by these huge peaks and glaciers. It was a very relaxing and majestic drives. No picture I could take would capture this. I tried multiple time sto get cash from ATM's. In Canada the ATM cards are on 2 different systems and you have to go to different ATMS depending on what network your card is on. I could not get cash until the afternoon where we found a bank where my card worked. We bought a thermometer and some yummy Canadian snacks as well. We continued on. By this time we are in complete Wilderness. Kilometers and Kilometers of wilderness. We saw many deer and even a wolf by the side of the road. While drivinbg it was nice to get lost in thought and reflection. The remoteness and solitude of it was somehow relaxing and put me into a sort of trance. We continued on to a town called Grand Prarie. It was much bigger than we expected and kind of dirty. There were 3 RV parks to pick from and we decided on the one with a big playground so Grant could burn some energy. The directions they gave were horrible and we got lost for almost an hour. We then drove down this muddy road, and arrived only to find the office closed. We had to call the manager who came to check us in and give us our site. It was 9 oclock and still bright daylight. As I type this at midnight, it has only now gotten dark. Weird. Mosquito's are bad here. We will have to bask in DEET. Hopefully we can get an early start tomorrow and make good time, Will fill the spare gas tanks as gas stops will get fewer and far between.