One thing that is interesting about being in the National Parks, most of the campgrounds have hot showers and flush toilets rather then outhouses. I’m not sure if that justifies the higher price or not, but it is nice having a hot shower before popping online to get some work-work done. $8.80 for a fire permit does seem a little high too (although in fairness that includes wood)

Assuming I can get caught up on work in a reasonable amount of time we’re going to head over to Johnston Canyon next, where we don’t believe I will have connectivity, so expect posts to be delayed for a day.

Hit Smitty’s in Banff for breakfast, so-so food, I’ve had worse, but I’ve had better. Oh well.

Off to Two Jack Campground, the Lakeside version. We drove through Lakeside first, then over to Main to investigate both. Main wasn’t great, sparse trees, sites close to each other, and nothing for a 31′ motorhome, so back to Lakeside. Between the time we first entered and when we returned we lost the site we were eyeballing (although it sounds like it probably happened while we were driving the loop anyway, so the sidetrip to check out Main probably didn’t kill us)

We grabbed site #2, which I think it probably a better site then the other option anyway, just took a bit of a creative parking job to properly utilize it. A hotdog lunch later, and here we are.

For those curious, we’re right on the south-west end of the lake, and can see to the southern tip. It doesn’t sound like there is a hike around the lake available though, although we may go look and see how far we can go without too much pain.

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We managed to get a nicer spot (or at least I think so, I’m not sure about dad yet), one of the more private ones, anyway. Not so private that I’d recommend wandering around the site naked, but nor would you get a view of a neighbour doing so.

Not a lot to do right at this campground, although we can walk over to the bus and go into Banff if we want — Not much to do there either, but we might try it anyway. We’ll probably give Two Jack Main a shot tomorrow. On the plus side, a boring-ish campsite means I’ll get caught up on work without staying up all night, so that part works out well.

Bought socks and eggs (for pancakes) at Safeway, but otherwise winging it on the food that we’ve got.

That’s about it for now.

As if on cue my mom arrived just as we started unpacking at the new site, and Lori arrived a bit later, bringing our tent. Lori and I will be tenting across the road from my parents’ motorhome in Bow Valley Campground.

My mom isn’t as aggressive a hiker, and we tend to stop to admire nature a little more, so it will be a nice change from the previous hike, which was a bit more then I’d have planned for a first hike of the year for someone as out of shape as myself, but it was a ton of fun.

Being an out of shape bonehead, I managed to forget my shoes, however I have some “hiking sandals” (sandals with excellent grips, better then what is left on my hiking shoes/boots), so it worked out just as well I suppose.

The trail wasn’t bad for a first hike of the year, about 2.(mumble)KM with around 400ft of elevation, not your smooth gravel trail but not bad for someone of my experience and fitness level, the only downer being that you can’t actually see the waterfall at the end of the hike.

No photos of this one since also being a bonehead, I set my camera on the wrong mode and screwed them up. Ooops.

In the past I have gone to Vegas and continued to work part of the time, spent a month in Chicago while working, and even moved from Calgary to Winnipeg for a few months without mentioning it to my employer for over a month.

This is a new one for me though, as I write this post I’m sitting in Bow Valley Campgrounds, located in Kananaskis Country on the Alberta side of the Rockies, writing this blog post on my laptop with a EVDO card. Almost 1Mb/s, only 150ms to Texas, this is not far off of the earlier cable modem deployments in the area.

Life is good.