Day 8: Shelby, MT to Banff, Alberta

Another long day of driving took us into Canada. I was chastised by the border guard by calling the letter Z zee. He told me in Canada, I must call it zed. Haha. The crossing was fairly uneventful, and Dad was annoyed he followed the rules and threw out our leftover meat, since they didn’t even ask about it. We drove towards Calgary and Desi began to melt down as Trudy woke up and was crying, too. Tommy convinced Dad to stop because the kids just needed a break. We grabbed lunch at Subway and Desmond enjoyed picking dandelions and blowing the fuzz everywhere.

We went on through Calgary, Alberta’s most populous city and stopped again to pick up groceries and some Canadian currency. Desmond immediately spotted the clock towers on our 20 dollar bills and a woman outside the bank told us it was the Peace Tower. Desmond continued to complain about his seat and we discussed switching Desmond’s carseat to a different position because he kept complaining that it was “too tight” and once he was located at the couch along the side of the RV, rather than at the dinette, he was much happier. He now faced the TV and I noticed he was at a better angle that did not put all his weight on his crotch. The rest of the day’s driving was better. I think he was a lot more comfortable.

Two pics of beautiful Banff, with the Rockies in the distance.

Our destination was Banff and we arrived around dinnertime. We stopped for gas in town and most of us realized we’d like to spend the evening in town looking at shops and eating dinner in a restaurant. We headed up to find a campsite in the Tunnel Mountains first and were pleased to find it was a really nice campground and we were located just next to the bathrooms. This was nice because we were really in bear, cougar, wolf, and coyote country. When you’re camping in places like this, you see lots of warnings not to leave out your food. In fact, you have to keep anything scented or anything that touched food inside a hard-sided camper and not in tents.

We walked over to the shuttle stop to catch the bus back into town and chatted up a nice British couple. Desmond was excited to meet some people from England, where his favorite cartoon character, Peppa Pig is from. They pointed out a female elk nearby and we walked over to snap some pictures of her resting in the shade. We were able to get very close; I think she would have let us walk right up to her (Dad assumed she was in labor) and Desi tried to, but I didn’t think that was the best idea.

Momma Elk

On the bus into town

We took the bus into Banff (free on the way down, $2 back up) and walked over to the clock tower we spotted when we drove into town. The clock tower was part of Clock Tower Village Mall, a Swiss Chalet-style building that also contained Banff Avenue Brewing Company, which was where we decided to eat dinner. We sampled the beers brought to us by our Australian waiter and I was thrilled to order a giant order of delicious, traditional poutine (French fries with beef gravy and cheese curds). If you’ve never had poutine, you are really missing out. It’s a French-Canadian thing, which I first fell in love with in Montreal, Canada a few years ago. I’ve found it at a few places in Cleveland since then, but was happy to see it on the menu. I ordered a black pilsner to go along with it. Tommy got a sampler and I tried each beer. Their beers were pleasant and it was nice not to have to cook dinner.

At Banff Ave Brewing Co.

POUTINE!!!!!

The town of Banff was bustling, mostly with Millennials, but also some families and other tourists. Tommy said it reminded him of an American ski town like Vale or Aspen. I’ve never been to either city, so I can’t say how accurate that is. The town has a lot of restaurants and some bars and a lot of tourist shops and some outdoors stores. It’s set in the Canadian Rockies and you can see snowy mountain peaks just beyond the town. We walked around a bit and popped into a candy shop, where I was excited to find Kinder Surprise Eggs. Desmond watches videos of people opening these Italian chocolate candy eggs that contain toys, but they are illegal in the US (choking hazard, I guess), so we planned to hunt them out in Canada. I bought two and will surprise him with them later.

Wildlife spotting in a tourist shop

The clock towers of Banff

OMG!!! Every silly clock imaginable!

A statue in town

Dad was about to crash after the long day of driving, so he and Mom took the bus back to our camp with Trudy. Desmond and I wanted to explore the town (so did Mom, I think, but she didn’t want to leave Dad alone), so we said we’d take the next bus back in another 40 minutes. We popped in and out of tourist shops and Desmond tried to find as many clocks as he could within them. When it was time to catch the bus, Tommy said he wanted to find a bathroom and I had a bit of a panic when I was at the bus stop with Desmond, the bus was there, and Tommy was nowhere in sight. Desmond cried about leaving without Daddy and just then I saw Tommy jogging towards us and the driver kindly said he would wait. It was ten o’clock in the evening when we caught the bus and there was still some sunlight, since we were now so much farther north. The extra daytime is great for allowing us some extra time to see the areas we will be exploring. We arrived back at the RV and Trudy was asleep. We hung out a bit and went to bed.