Rocky Mountain High

Well, THAT was quite the day in the rig!!!

I had a nice leisurely coffee and breakfast with Gabrielle and Clarence, watched a great slide show of the family rebellion from which they just returned with my wife and their side of the family (including our three sons), and left Calgary headed for Jasper.

There is a lot of GORGEOUS country through there - but if one is driving through it in a fairly heavily loaded F250 there is not much time for rubber-necking.  Not everybody had that figured out, judging by the number of roadside crosses, wreaths, and other memorials along the way.  At one point, I had pulled over to the right to allow a faster vehicle to overtake me, and not three minutes later saw his tail lights at the top of a hill.  I am not one to ignore such a warning and immediately began to slow down.  Just over the crest of the hill were about twenty vehicles, on both shoulders and IN THE MIDDLE of the road, all stopped.  I assumed it must be a dreadful accident, probably a head-on, and hit my four-way flashers.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that it was a bunch of morons all stopped on a blind hill looking at something (maybe a bear???) off the side of the road in the woods.  An eighteen-wheeler coming onto that scene would have killed at least a hundred people, and would have been utterly unable to stop.  Restraining my urge to stop and tell these freakin' idiots just what a bunch of fools they were, I gritted my teeth, threaded through the mess of vehicles, and got the hell out of there before any eighteen wheeler might arrive on-scene and count me amongst the casualties.

I am DELIGHTED with my truck - it has been marvellous going up and down the mountains, always lots of power, and excellent engine braking on the long downhills. 

So I finally got to Jasper, and discovered to my surprise that the huge RV campground was FULL.  Almost a thousand sites, and no room in the inn.  The town of Jasper had HUNDREDS more RVs, trailers, etc, and I am guessing most of them just parked on the street overnight, which a LARGE sign coming into town had clearly stated was a hanging offence.

At that point, I decided that I would just keep trucking and drove another hour and a half to the town of Valemount BC, through the Yellowhead Pass, more beautiful scenery that I did not get much chance to see.  There is a "full service" RV campground here, bald as a baby's bottom, full of rigs that cost more than my house, but a pretty good place to stay and WOW!!!! reliable WiFi internet!

BUT!!!  Check out time is in half an hour and I have about an hour's worth of stuff to do before I saddle up, so I will end these scribblings now.  If my math is correct, today is day 13 and I have covered 4600 km give or take.

Doug