Canada for a few days

We started across Montana for Glacier National Park, when Sandy said "hey, lets bop up to Canada for a few".   It had been raining quite a bit in the lower 48 and the sky looked brighter in Canada, so we altered course and went up through Calgary, heading for Banff National Park.   

It was a piece of cake going through Customs, we were afraid we'd have to dump all of our fruits and vegetables.  When we took a bus to Vancouver to catch a cruise a few years ago, we could not take ANY fresh food across the boarder.  I guess the rules are different for an RV, they expect you to have food with you.  The roads were good to Calgary, but they don't have a by-pass around the city, we were lucky it was a Sunday.  We got up to Canmore, just outside the park and set up camp at Spring Creek Mountain Village.  We didn't know what to expect for campgrounds in the national park system in Canada, and our Good Sam Campground Guide wasn't much help.  

The next day we were off to explore Banff and Jasper National Parks.  First we checked out Lake Louise campground (one of the parks CG), it was very nice, and busy.  They told us to get up there by noon to get a spot, no reservations this early in the season.  The CG has 30amp service and a 8 lane dump station (of course that was not enough, as we saw the next day).  The CG was full of rental RV's from Canada and the U.S., I guess those folks thought you had to dump each morning. 

One thing I noticed while driving the Parks, they had special overpasses for the wildlife to cross the highway!  It's landscaped with trees, shrubs, and grass.

 This is a four lane divided modern highway with 12' fences the whole length and electrified cattle guards to keep the critters out.  They built the highway with 12' culverts underground for the wildlife, but some don't like to go in a cave, they'd rather dodge cars.  They tried the overpass and monitored wildlife traffic with cameras.  Now they are building more overpasses.

The next day we relocated to a National Park CG at Lake Louise so we could explore Jasper National Park to the north.  It was all about hiking, waterfalls, and wildlife.  

I'm not sure what these guys are doing, a lot of head butting going on, but it's not mating season.  They were just out in the middle of the road.........  It ends up with a big CRACK sound.

Well, the rain caught up with us (I've lost track of the number of times we've washed the coach), so we headed back down the other side of the Rockies to West Glacier Montana, and back on track.  It was a brief whirl-wind tour of Canada, and was just a little early in the season, but the white water and water falls were spectacular.  Here are some more parting shots.