Moving to Banff

Robert, Monday, May 19
Today was a moving day. One of the things I wanted to check out before we hit the road was our water pump. It was working fine after we got it "fixed" in Lethbridge. (By fixed, I mean the RV tech got it primed.) The water pressure at this campground is very low so we were hooked up to the water system and had the pump running at the same time. With both the water hook-up and the pump running, we had great water pressure. I drained the fresh water tank and ran the pump until it was out of water. Then I put water in the fresh water tank and tried to get the pump to prime itself–no go. We definitely need to get the pump replaced before we get further north where a lot of the camping is "dry" camping meaning no hook-ups. As we can carry 100 gallons of fresh water and we have the generators, dry camping is not a problem as long as the water pump works.
Once we got hitched, we left the campground around 11:00 am. The drive to Banff was less than 100 miles so we got to the campground a little after 2:00 pm. The reason it took three hours is that the road goes over two mountain passes with 8% grades so we often we only going 40 mph. The campground in Banff is in Banff National Park. It is called Tunnel Mountain RV Park. It is a very pretty campground. I took a nap in a recliner while Leslie read. As the weather here is cool (about 50 F) and cloudy, we decided that stew would be good for supper. I whined that we had been on the road for over a week and Leslie had yet to make bread in her bread maker so she made bread to go with the stew–Yum!
While we were eating dinner, a coyote ran past the trailer about 75 feet away. Leslie got some pictures. All around our campsite are a bunch of ground squirrels and I guess he was seeing if any were not paying attention. When we were told about this campground back in Canmore, we were told that there was a lot of wildlife so maybe we will see more. We would definitely return to this campground. After we finished our evening walk (or at least I finished), Leslie walked down to the end of the campground and took pictures of some elk.