Banff National Park

Leslie Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Here’s a picture taken from our campsite. This is really a great campground Banff National Park, Tunnel Mountain Trailer Park. We were afraid that the campground would be rows rigs in parking-lot style. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The sites are widely spaced amid lodgepole pine trees. All of the sites have full hook-ups with 30 amp electrical service.

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Yesterday I noticed that Molly had a lump under her jaw on the left side. Robert felt it as well. This morning we called their vet in Colorado. Their vet suggested that Molly may need more antibiotics. (Just before we left Colorado we had taken both cats in for a check-up. They both had serious dental problems. They both needed teeth cleaning and had several teeth pulled. After the dental procedures, they were on antibiotics for a week. We also learned that we need to brush their teeth every day. We’re working on the tooth brushing – and I still have 10 fingers.) We found a local vet for Molly. The Canadian vet said that he guessed that Molly’s swollen lymph node is an infection remaining from her tooth problems. He prescribed another antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory drug. If she isn’t better in a week, we’ll have to find another vet for more aggressive testing and treatment.

Long-term travel presents some challenges not faced on usual vacations. One of those challenges is how to have maintenance prescriptions filled. Since we are traveling for such a long time, I had planned on buying regular prescriptions from Canadian or Alaskan pharmacies along the way. I had my doctor in Colorado write me separate RX s (rather than one refillable RX) so that I could have them filled along the way. (At home we use a mail-order pharmacy but that wouldn’t work as we are moving constantly.) I stopped by a pharmacy in Canmore, Alberta today to ask the price for a 90-day supply. The pharmacist said that she could not fill a prescription written in the US. I’m curious about her inability to fill a US written RX because we’ve all read of Americans traveling to Canada to buy less expensive prescriptions. The mail-order pharmacy price at home is $125.00 for a 90 day supply. The price for the same name brand drug in the pharmacy in Canmore would be $25.00 for a 90-day supply. The pharmacist suggested that one would need to go to clinic in Canada (at a cost of approximately $100) to obtain a Canadian prescription. The end result of that would be the same cost as buying the prescription via mail-order at home. Obviously that isn’t worth the effort but I’ll keep you informed as I see how this goes along the way.

After getting Molly back to the 5th wheel we took off to see Banff. The town of Banff is mostly a tourist town with lots of expensive shops (think Aspen). We decided to eat dinner out because it is supposed to rain so our grilling plans would have to wait. We found an Irish pub on a back street. I ordered meatloaf, thinking it would be fairly generic. The meatloaf turned out to have a hot chutney sauce. Ouch! Robert and I traded dinners so that I got to enjoy his stuffed chicken.

After dinner we went on a driving expedition looking for wild animals. I had met someone in the campground last night who told me that we could find many animals along the river and near the golf course. We captured a picture of each of us along the river.

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Next I got a below the falls in Banff.

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Later we drove along the golf course and saw a herd of elk and then a coyote. The coyote ran quickly along the row of trees but when he approached the elk, the elk acted very aggressively towards the coyote. The elf ran the coyote off. The coyote moved so quickly .

From here we’re headed north to Jasper. The temperature is supposed to drop dramatically. It’s back to sweatshirts.

More later,
Leslie