August 24, 2011 –

We left Peter and Jean’s about 9:30am heading for Banff.  Our first scheduled stop was at the Hopkins Produce stand just down the road towards Invermere.  While Carol went in to buy us supplies for dinner and some fruit I checked the new oil pressure sensing switch to make sure that it wasn’t leaking.

Our second stop was at the Lucky Strike gas station – a very small station with only a couple of pumps another mile down the road.  This was our first gas purchase in Canada on this trip and it was even more than last year.

Carol was driving the Tracker because we knew that the road to Banff was going to be pretty hilly and it would be a lot easier on the coach this way.  When I started the coach after gassing up I looked down at the temperature gauge and it wasn’t registering anything.

Apparently, when I installed the new oil pressure switch I must have bent the mechanical engine temp gauge tube a little and it quit working – we needed a new one.  I did not want to drive anywhere without one, especially over the road to Banff so I drove to the NAPA store just off the highway in Invermere.  I bought the new gauge – luckily they had a Fahrenheitf scaled replacement and let me install it in their parking lot.

We left the NAPA store at about 10:30am and headed for Banff but not before I had a little scare as soon as we left.  Apparently I had routed the new temp gauge lead a little too close to the gas pedal linkage and the gas pedal got stuck down and I had to turn off the engine and stop pretty quickly.  The stop was effortless with those new disc brakes by the way.

The drive to Banff was about 2 hours long and the coach ran great the whole way.  It sure runs nice without that Tracker back there.  I don’t like driving without Carol in the coach though – pretty lonely.

We arrived in Banff and drove to the Tunnel Mountain Trailer Camp – a city park in the middle of a National Park I guess.  We got a nice site – all 350 sites are nice I think – and got set up and headed into town.

We decided to drive around a little but quickly found ourselves following signs to the gondola ride.  We figured we scope it out and take the ride in the next couple of days.  When we got there we decided to just go ahead and take the ride today – the weather was beautiful and wouldn’t get any better later in the week.  The ride and the scenery were truly awesome – see the photos below.  The weather at the top was windy and a little chilly but not bad.

When we got back into town we were hungry and walked around scoping out all of the touristy restaurants.  Finally found an Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant in a little shopping mall right in the center of town.  We had a very nice dinner, complete with desert at a very reasonable price and good service from Scott our waiter.

We stopped at the local Starbuck’s for a mocha and some wifi and then headed ‘home’ for an early evening of guitar practice and some reading – no more internet until tomorrow.