Tunnel Mountain Campground, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Odometer – 6250
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Today is Canada Day, celebrating 140 years of Canadian Independence. I wore a red and white shirt to show my support. We wanted to celebrate in a happening place, so we drove as early as we could from the campground to Banff. Banff is both name of a National Park, and a town of 7500 people situated in the park.
We got into town around noon, and first thing checked into our campground, which is about 2km from the center. It is a huge camp with room for about 500 RVs. No playground or BBQ facilities, but we do have a full hookup, which is something you don’t get in most US National Parks. This campground will be our base camp for the next week or so.
After checking that our site is fine, we drove into town and found a parking space in one of the side streets right next to the center. We walked down Banff Avenue, part of which is under reconstruction this summer, and saw all the tourist shops. We stepped into a good lunch at The MapleLeaf. We sat in a backroom that had a huge moose head overhanging our table. Now we can finally say we all saw a moose.
After lunch we strolled over to central park, for the Canada Day events. There were bands appearing on a stage, cookouts, jumping houses for kids, facepainting, and the usual outdoor shticks.
The park is right along Bow River, and we saw that on the other side there is a big playground for kids. So we crossed and the kids enjoyed themselves for over an hour. Around the playground were picnic tables and grills, and we notices that most of our neighbors in the park are “cousinsâ€. I spoke with one dad whose daughter played with Shir and Orr, and he told me he came to Canada from Iraq 12 years ago. He pointed to some other men, from Egypt and Lebanon. Sababa, a mideast peacefest in a Banff playground.
After the park, we strolled a bit more around town, and finally Paola found crocs for Shir and Orr. Both girls were absolutely enamored with the new shoes, their big brother has crocs and they were jealous. Ron got a Tigger pin to add to his crocs. (For those who don’t understand, look at the closeup of the kids with their new crocs.)
We returned to the campground and had supper, trying to stretch the clock till 11pm. That’s when it finally gets dark here and the fireworks were set to begin. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the Banff town fireworks because the mountain our campground is situated on was in the way. Ron and I were truly disappointed. Ron went to sleep after 11:30pm.
It’s late so goodnight.
-Hemi
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Alberta, Big Trip, Canada, North America RV 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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