This would be our last day in Banff.  We had some things to do around town and somehow stayed busy without doing very much.  We explored a little bit more around Tunnel Mountain where we were staying and got another view of the Banff Springs Hotel.   Even caught a long distance view of a wedding in an awesome ‘cathedral’ of the Rocky Mountains.  There are photos below but they honestly don’t do justice to the beauty and the size of the mountains.

If you ever come here – and you should – the Tunnel Mountain Campground is the place to stay.  They have three levels of service:  full hookups, electric only with water and dump available and free, and primitive – no hookups.  At first we took the full hookups but after one night switched to the electric only sites.  The camping is at the side of a paved road and it is a little more crowded than the full hookups sites but the sites are arranged end-for-end and are on each side of the road.  The scenery is everywhere while there is none at the full hookup sites.

Tunnel Mountain is about a mile (1.5km) from town and there is plenty of free parking throughout the town.  It was crowded but not bad.  This is the peak season for tourists and there were plenty of them/us but it was nowhere near capacity.

We ate at the Old Spaghetti Factrory and then at Pad Thai.  Both were very good and not expensive.

There are only three gas stations in Banff and all of them are small and hard to get an RV in and out of.

Banff is as unspoiled a tourist place as you will find in North America – my first.  Canadians in Western Canada are as laid back as they can be.  Everyone is smiling and seems happy.  The air and the water are clean – the water is as clear as glass and tastes wonderful.  The air had some moisture making it fuzzy in the morning but clear and bright in the afternoon.  Mid to late August was wonderful – at least this year.

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August 26, 2011  Being in Canada is nice in that the people are friendly and the scenery is fantastic – communicating is a pain in the butt though.  The cell phone roaming charges are $0.79 per minute and the internet is more than $2 per megabyte which is very expensive considering how much we use it.

Our first trip in the morning every morning so far – has been to pick up voice mails and make any phone calls that need to be made.  We are using a pay phone and a prepaid calling card that I have had since our European trip two years ago.  That probably makes me a cheapskate but I hate having to pay so much extra just because we crossed some imaginary line especially when we pay for more than 800 minutes per month.

After picking up voice mails and making some reservations for Chilliwack and Vancouver we headed out for some sightseeing and a little walk.  Chilliwack is a town on the way from Vernon, BC to Vancouver, BC and one of Carol’s Mom’s neighbors lives there.  We know him and he is a very nice guy – former RCMP officer – so we are going to visit him for an evening.  Vernon is where our former neighbors, Neil and Brenda, spend their summers and the site of our next visit.

Our walk was just around the Cascade Pond just outside of town.  After that we decided to head back up Sulphur Mountain – the site of our gondola ride – for a visit to the Banff Upper Hot Springs on the same mountain.  On the road up the mountain we noticed an “Administration Building” surrounded by “Cascade Gardens”.  I couldn’t help myself taking photos of some of the unusual flowers – about 50,000 plants that reach their peak right about now. After the gardens we spent about an hour soaking our tired, old(?), bones in the hot water – life is good.

Another visit to town for some WiFi and a haircut for Carol – as usual, she hates it – and then back ‘home’ for an early evening.  We have been sleeping long and well with the cool night air and the late sunrises due to high mountains all around.

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August 25^th  Without the internet – or limited use of it – we have time to talk about stuff.  This morning we talked about the GMC and the “lack of reliability” we have been experiencing lately.

I have to admit that it has been unreliable, especially if you consider the fact that I couldn’t find the problem for days and there might even have been multiple problems.  Hopefully, it is now fixed.   I feel bad about that but I know that things like that happen even to new rigs.

A difference between having a GMC and a later-model SOB is mostly in who fixes it, how much it costs, and how long it takes.  With the GMC if I can fix it I do and it takes much less time and costs much less.  If I cannot fix it then I probably know someone who can and they might even be close to where I am at the time.

Another difference between having a GMC and an SOB is the satisfaction of making it into whatever you want.  It is probably along the same lines as building a hot-rod.  The other GMC owners and our vendors, their experience, and their willingness to help is a big factor in making the process fun and productive.  Our vendors invest in products that make the GMC safer and more efficient to operate – without them we would be in trouble keeping these beauties running.

We like the campground we are in – the Tunnel Mountain campground but the full hookup section that we were in was pretty ugly.  We took a look at the electric-only section of the park and it looked really nice so we switched to that section.  Now we have views of mountains in every direction – beautiful.

It was another clear crisp dry sunny day in Banff.  After some housekeeping we went to see the Banff Springs Hotel which was built by the railroad in the 1930’s so that people could get to the springs – and they could make money.  I hope some of the photos help to show you what it looks like in person.

On the way down the hill from the hotel we took a look at the Bow River falls, met a Mountie, and saw a bride.  Then we did a little grocery shopping at the Safeway and went to Starbucks for WiFi.  I think we’ll try McDonalds tomorrow.

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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.

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We are parked in Peter and Jean’s driveway at their cabin in Windermere, BC, Canada.  Turns out these rivers and lakes are the headwaters of the Columbia River.  Here they flow north for a while then they turn west and eventually flow into the Pacific Ocean.

This morning, before Peter and Jean arrived from Calgary, I continued to work on solving the problem with Barbie.  I figured out during the night – hard to stop puzzling about this – that the fuel pump could be cutting out because of some other electrical issue.  The fuel pump is powered through a relay and an oil pressure sensing switch that could be causing the problem so I replaced both of them.  I also eliminated the fuel pressure regulator.  Not much else left to replace or fix.

When they did arrive we had a nice lunch and then they took us for a ride up a very rough dirt road almost to the top of a nearby mountain.  We hiked that last couple of hundred vertical feet to the top for some fantastic views.  This place is very scenic and we couldn’t ask for better weather.

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This was supposed to be an easy day but it turned out to be stressful again.  Our problems continued but we did make it. It was just over 200 miles but took us 7 hours counting all stops – pain and pleasure.

The first thing that happened was our fuel pump wire got loose again (happened on a previous trip).  I had checked the connections by pushing on them several times over the past few days as part of working on these fuel problems.  Something, probably my ‘checking’ made one of the connectors come loose this morning.  Carol persuaded me to check it right away so we didn’t lose much time on that one.

The coach ran great for quite a while but then started doing the fuel starvation symptom thing again (a technical term).   We were already in Canada when it started this time.  It got pretty bad and we had to stop a couple of times to restart it – but it did start.  On about the third time I decided I had to eliminate the possibility that it was ignition related so I installed the module and coil I had bought as spares a couple of days ago.

It did seem like the engine ran much better now but the fuel problem was still there.  The difference now was that I could keep it running.  Pumping the gas pedal when it choked and going slow – about 40mph – kept it running for the last 50 miles or so.

Now, after a long day of trying to figure out what is going on, I have suddenly realized that there is still one more active component in my fuel system that I have not eliminated – the fuel pressure regulator!  It could easily be causing this problem.  I will eliminate it tomorrow – whatever parts I need to splice around it should be available in Invermere, the next town north.  I also hope to find an air compressor and eliminate the only other possibilities – the fuel lines and the tank switch.  We plan to be here for 3 nights and I’ll get started tomorrow.

Sorry, no photos today.  Nothing to take pictures of.

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We packed a lunch and headed for Glacier again.  This time we are only about 10 miles away so much easier.  It was a Saturday morning so we expected more people and we were right – but not real bad.  This time we planned to take the shuttle so we wouldn’t have to worry about parking at Logan Pass which fills up early and stays full all day.

We were lucky enough to be the last two onto the express shuttle to Logan.  Other shuttles stop at lots of places and take even longer – the express took at least an hour to get there counting construction delays.

When we got to Logan Pass it was very crowded.  We decided to take the hike to see Hidden Lake.  We were told it was another ‘easy’ hike on a boardwalk and that in no time we’d see Hidden Lake.  What no one said was that the boardwalk had lots of big stair steps all the way and it was up a fairly steep hill.  At the end of the boardwalk there was snow on the path and it was slippery.  When we got to the snow we decided we were not equipped – wrong shoes and bad attitudes – so we turned around and headed back.  Hidden Lake stayed hidden from us.

We got back to our camp after 2pm after leaving at 9am.  The whole time, except for the approximately 1 hour hike, was on shuttles or buses.  We don’t like crowds!  Here are today’s photos:

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Friday, August 19th, we left our spot at Lakeside and moved to Mountain Meadows RV Park, Corem, Montana.  It was a short and easy drive.  We stopped for gas and some spare ignition parts and still got here before check-out time and had to wait a few minutes.  We plan to be here for two nights before heading to Canada.

The spare ignition parts are something that I have meant to buy and keep available but never got around to.  Now, with the engine quitting in the middle of the highway a couple of times, if there is any possibility that these problems are ignition related I want to be able to fix them.  One of these parts, the coil, did break once on a Christmas Day – Barbie quit in the middle of an intersection and we had to be towed to a WalMart parking lot – and we couldn’t fix it until the following day.  If that happens again we’ll have our own part.

The weather was so beautiful today.  Perfect temperature and blue skies.  As soon as we got to our RV park and hooked up, we left for Glacier.  We went to Lake McDonald and had a great lunch at the Lodge.  An emu burger!  Definitely a first – very good, tender, and tasty but still a little strange to be eating an emu.   The Lodge is pretty old but the grounds are beautiful and there are tons of flowers everywhere.  We took a boat ride that was recommended by friends.  I hate to say it but we wouldn’t recommend it – maybe our particular Park Ranger was bad – because it was boring.  Only the first 12 people aboard get to sit on the open top so we were stuck underneath in the cabin.  Not the greatest!  Neither would we recommend one of the Red Bus tours – it looks interesting and fun but you are stuck in one of those cars and on their schedule for hours.  Tomorrow we will take the shuttle and do a little light hiking.

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We spent lots more time visiting with Pam and Mike.  There are lots of good breakfast places around and we are trying a few of them.  Yesterday it was the Somers Bay Cafe in the very tiny town of Somers.  Today it was the Echo Lake Cafe.

Yesterday, after breakfast, we just did chores – Carol and I washed the GMC and the Tracker and just hung around until going to Pam and Mike’s house for a little home cooked Mexican food.

Today, after breakfast we all got on our bikes and rode 5 miles downhill to Big Fork and Brookies Cookies for an iced coffee and a cookie.  The whole time we were worried about our – mostly Carol’s – ability to ride back up the hill but it turned out to be a piece of cake.  Actually, once we were done we all felt like it was easier coming back than it was going – I know it was downhill because it was down to the river for 3 miles and then following the river downstream to Big Fork for another 2 miles.

Here are the photos – some llamas and ospreys but not much else.

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Glacier National Park is about 1 hour north of Lakeside and Flathead Lake.  This park is in the middle of the Rocky Mountains so the scenery is amazing – difficult to capture with a still camera.  We left ‘home’ a little late (9am) but we don’t think it made any difference – the place was crowded.  It was not as crowded as Yosemite or Yellowstone but still very busy.

Mike had suggested a couple of easy hikes – he knows we are not in hiking shape – and the ranger at the park suggested more.  The first stop suggested by both of them was Avalanche Creek.  There is a little hike on a wooden path suspended over the forest floor and then onto a paved path.  This was really nice but at the end of it there was a trail to Avalanche Lake.

The sign at the head of the trail to Avalanche Lake said it was about 2 miles and a 500 foot altitude gain.  It said the average time is 2 to 3 hours.  We took almost 2 hours to get there and only about 45 minutes to get back.  The altitude gain may be only 500 feet but the ups and downs make it seem like a lot more.  It was worth it though.

The road through the park from the east to the west side is called the ‘Road to the Sun’ and it is truly amazing.  Carol drove the Tracker most of the way but there was lots of construction – and flag people making us stop for up to 10 minutes at a time – so we decided to just go out the east side of the park and go around it on the way home.  I don’t think we saved any time but it was much smoother than it would have been going back the way we came.  Check out the photos below – put the mouse pointer on a photo and it will show the caption.

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