[r] Canada Story(3): Heading to Banff

The next morning, another friend of Wei -- Ping came and soon a busy day started. We bought the food and snacks, packed the car, and consulted people who just went back from Banff. Just as the Chinese proverb said, "three is always better than one". All were done quite efficiently.

On the morning of August 13, four travelers set out from Vancouver. Our route was along the trans-Canada highway -- Canadian One, roughly 700 miles to Banff town. British Columbia boasted it as "beautiful B.C.", and that was proved true along the way. Conifers thickly covered the mountains and valleys; Waterfalls appeared from time to time, and often unexpectedly; Ice cones topped remote mountain tops. It was late summer, so the greens were still greens, not as colorful as the Midwest foliage view in the fall. But lighting was fantastic, together with depth of scenes, so you would still feel God as a great artist, painting everything with his magic brush and palette.

We took two breaks on the way that day. One was lunch at the hot noon on roadside. Another was at the town of Revelstroke. The town was not big, but being a must-pass on trans-Canada, there were lots of visitors on its streets. I especially like the road signs to the city centre, which always said "follow this sign till you see the bears". Of course, I finally met the bear statues and gave them big hugs.

Continue going east, roadway became narrow and winding, forecasting our approaching the famous national park. For some places, the road was so narrow that walls were built along its side to avoid possible vehicle falling down the hill. The uphill and downhill added up together was about 30 miles, then all of a sudden, before us in the basin of snow mountains, appeared Banff town.

It was midnight already. Mist rose off on the road and the town was in quiet sleep. Slowly drove along the church, gift shops and old pubs, we were like a group of fairies sneaking through. The campground, village two, was uphill about 2 miles from town. Setting up tent, everyone soon went sound sleep after a long journey. Till next morning I got up early and took this picture of our site.