Two years after our Yellowstone trip, we embarked on another. I had seen all these places but my family hadn’t. We decided to head to Canada, Banff and Jasper National Parks.

The route we took was Redding CA, Bend OR, Spokane WA. From Spokane, we went up the Idaho panhandle and entered Canada. We had a bit of ‘fun’ with the border guard going into Canada. He asked me “If I brought any firearms along”, I said no. He then asked “What weapons do I have”, I said “None, I know your regulations”. We made it to Kootenay Provincial Park and camped there overnight. Here is a shot of that:

The parks normally have full hookups if you want it.The one thing we realized is that it didn’t get dark until around 11pm! Makes you want to have another meal to eat later.

From there we went to Banff. I highly recommend a visit to Banff at least once in your future. It is a nice town that may be a bit overcommericalized. The vistas are spectacular. We were there during the first part of July and needed a coat most of the time. Very cool and wet weather for that time. Below is a picture of the Bow River Falls:

After staying in Banff for 4 nights, we moved up to Jasper National Park. The town of Jasper is much more quaint since it is smaller and less visitors head up there. I remember the campground there when I was smaller. We were eating lunch when the news came over the radio that Elvis had died. Jasper was cold and wet as the other locales. However that didn’t stop us from heading out and doing some sightseeing. The rivers up there are primarily fed from glacier water which gives them their unique color:

The scenery in these parks is amazing. I wish it was better weather for the trip. We even got snowed on going over some of the passes. This was the time when the mall in Edmonton (largest in the world) had a tornado rip off part of its roof! Here is some more scenery with the weather:

We had planned on leaving Jasper and then spending a night or two in Glacier National Park. However, the weather changed our plans. We decided to continue west to get behind the storm. We spent the next night in Salmon Arm. It was nice, clear and warm, we even spent some time in the hot tub.

After Salmon Arm we headed down the Fraser River canyon. I also remember this as a kid. We were able to get across the border before they closed. We went through at Sumas, I wanted to avoid the I-5 crossing. We told them that we had some meat from Canada. That set off the red flag and they had us go into the office as they looked through our trailer and removed many food items. We were back in the US! We spent the night in Bellingham, WA. The next night was Eugene OR, then Redding CA, and then home.

We will go back to Canada again but it won’t be soon. There are MANY other things to see in the US first. We had good and bad experiences with the Canadians. Some were very welcoming and friendly and some were just happy to see our money. We talked to some the hot tub in Salmon Arm. They felt that Canada was becoming too “Americanized”, America thought that all the terrorists came in through Canada, and they didn’t like how we treated them about Mad Cow. I think they were not happy about the exchange rate either.

We took about 19 days and 4100 miles total.