Bonus Camping Day

Up until this point, the trip had been carefully booked so that we know where we were going to be and more importantly, where we would be sleeping. Starting today, we were beginning our trek home and had several thoughts about how to get there, but nothing had been organized.  Originally, we thought we might head to Drumheller and check out the dinosaurs, or maybe we would make our way home through Edmonton. Instead, in another moment of weakness on Adam's part, we decided to follow Dave and Kathy south toward Banff and camp for one more night. (!)

Now, this wasn't as spontaneous as it sounds.  We didn't just get up this morning and decide that we would go wherever Dave and Kathy went. We talked about it a couple of nights ago and then we went online to find a campsite that we could book. Good thing too, because the campground that they had been thinking of going to was pretty much full and so we ended up with the last two side by side sites at Johnston Canyon.

On our way south to Banff, we planned a couple of stops along the way.  We stopped to see Sunwapta Falls first. It was a short little walk to see the falls and they were very pretty...

I had forgotten how scenic the Icefields Parkway is...

Our main stop was the Columbia Icefield. This is always a must see for me because I remember first being there in 1986 when our family drove out west and the glacier is changing all the time, so it is neat to see how much change there is. As usual, the walk out to the glacier itself always gets longer as it retreats, but this year, I was surprised to see that you can't even get to the glacier anymore. 

The glacier and the tape in front of it stopping us from going any further

1986 - That is Dad, Luanne and me standing on the edge of the glacier.

2015 - Me and Matthew in approximately the same spot. The marker in the foreground says 1982

Looking back down the trail to the parking lot. The little group of people just off the path in the foreground is approximately where the glacier was in 1982 and approximately where we were standing in the previous picture.

But before we even got up to see the glacier, we were getting ready to go and were playing down by the lake that you can see in the photo above as we were getting everyone sunblocked.  There was a gusty little wind coming off the glacier and as Matthew was at the edge of the lake, the wind blew his Tilly hat off his head and into the water. He screamed and we thought he fell in, but we ran over any way, because it was his Tilly hat! Unfortunately, we weren't fast enough to get to it before the wind blew it away from the shore. Fortunately, the wind was blowing in the right direction and so it would eventually float up to the shore on the other side. So I walked around to the other side and kept my eye on the hat which was exactly the same colour as the water as it floated its way across the lake.  15 minutes later, the hat was rescued and we have a testimonial for the Tilly website.

 waiting...

There it is!

Success

Then we all carried on to find our accommodations for the night.  It turned out to be a beautiful campground and our site was close to the washrooms and the wood pile.  They allowed 2 tents on one site, so even though Dave and Kathy were next door, we all set up on our site and had a little camping party. It was a great time.

We finally had trees appropriately far enough apart for our hammock

Looking at the sky from my chair by the fire in our campsite

This being our last night camping, the kids were focused on getting all their badges to be Camp Champs. This was a little incentive program from MEC that gave sticker badges for things like helping set up the tent, making breakfast, hiking and other camping stuff for kids. Here they are working on the Marshmallow Master badge...

The last badge was Star Gazer and they had to find the Big Dipper in the night sky. We had had some trouble doing this one, because it is July and the days are pretty long.  Especially when we were as far north as Jasper.  At 11:00, the sky still wasn't dark enough to see stars and while the kids were going to bed pretty late, it wasn't late enough to see the stars. So Adam and Kathy adapted the curriculum a little bit and drew star dots on pieces of paper and had the kids trace and label the Big and Little Dippers and Polaris. Then we awarded them their badges.

The very proud Camp Champs with their glow stick necklaces!!

Wow, what a busy day.