This fourteenth posting of our Alaska RV trip is about our time in Yukon, British Columbia and Alberta .

Yukon, Canada

The first province after Alaska is Yukon. This is the same route we used to go to Alaska, except we will not go Haines, AK. Also, when we get to Prince George, BC, we will take Hwy 16 through Alberta to Montana.

Haines Junction

It’s still smokey. We cross the border into Yukon, Canada and they tell us that there is a wildfire close to the road. A while later, we get stopped and he tells us that we can proceed, but to slow down for firefighters and not to stop for the next 12 kilometers. We can see where the fires are.

We drive to Haines Junction, YT and stop at Fas Gas RV Park. They don’t have any pull-thrus, but  she tells us about Otter Falls Cutoff RV Park, about 30 km away. She calls and reserves a pull-through for us. We get a pull-thru, with water and electric for $38.29cad.  

Watkins Lake

It’s still smokey in the morning. We see the sun, but it looks like a dull orange glow in a gray sky. Things clear up a little as we drive.

We stop at the Save-on-Foods grocery store in Whitehorse, YT. The last time we were in Whitehorse, we shopped at Walmart, but it wasn’t a Super Center (Centre), so it didn’t have a lot of grocery items. Save-on-Foods is a high-end Canadian grocery chain. Somebody in Alaska told us about the store in Whitehorse. It is very nice.

We drive to Watkins Lake, YT, and get a nice pull-through site at Tags RV park. This place has fuel, laundry and a store with groceries and more. If we had known they had all this, we would have saved ourselves a few stops today.

This is a full hook-up site so the next morning we spend time to clean our black water tank with our “swivel stick”. When we’re finished, it shows empty! Then we drive to Fort Nelson.

British Columbia

Our GPS does a lot more than tell us where to go—it tells us our speed, what road we’re on, if we’re close to a state or province border, and a lot more.

The border between Yukon and British Columbia is the 60th parallel north. The Alaska Highway twists and turns crossing the border several times. We get informed everytime we cross. Furthermore, the highway number changes from 1 to 97 when we are in Yukon versus British Columbia.

We stop for lunch at the Coal River Lodge for bison burgers. Very Good! 

We see lots of wildlife today, including bears, bison, caribou and a golden eagle.

Fort Nelson

We drive to Blue Bell Inn & RV Park, in Fort Nelson, BC. It’s not as nice as the Triple G Hideaway, where we stayed last time, but it’s cheaper—$25cad for a pull-thru with water and electric. We had debated stopping somewhere without electricity, but it is getting hotter, and we want A/C until it cools off later in the evening. The reason it is cheaper is that there isn’t place to dump.

There’s some smoke today, but it isn’t bad. It looks like we won’t be able to avoid smoke for a while. We make some plans. Tomorrow, Dawson Creek and then, Prince George.

Dawson Creek

We get up and top off the fresh water tank. Blue Bell Inn RV park has no dump, so we can’t empty our holding tanks. That’s okay—we emptied them yesterday morning. We’re planning on boondocking at Walmart tonight, but we should be good for one more day.

We fill up with gas at the Blue Bell Inn and start driving to Dawson Creek. We stop at Pink Mountain Campground and buy two six-packs for $17usd. That’s a lot for a six-pack of Coors Light and Labatt Blue—not even cold.

We drive to the Walmart Super Centre and find a spot in the parking lot. We go inside and spend $140cad ($107usd) on miscellaneous stuff.

One Canadian dollar is currently worth about 76 US cents. We use a credit card for most purchases. The bank automatically adjusts for the exchange rate. Most credit cards charge a foreign transaction fee, but we have one that doesn’t. (As far as I can tell, the foreign transaction fee is just a way for the bank to get more money.) We also carry a small amount of Canadian currency. We use our ATM card to withdraw cash from our checking account, and the bank adjusts for the current exchange rate.

Prince George

We get up at 7:00, make some coffee, and take off about an hour later. We stop for gas, and then at the first pullout to make breakfast and more coffee. We stop for lunch at Bijoux Falls Provincial Park. We stopped here on the way north (See 2019 RV Trip—Alaska, Part 5).

We stop at the Husky station in Prince George. We pull into one of the large bays and wash the RV and car. This takes about an hour and $15usd (Not bad). The vehicles are not perfect, but much cleaner.

Then we drive to Hartway RV Park. They are full, but we get a spot on the grass, with water and 30-amp for $37cad. This is a nice RV park. Their WiFi works great and we back-up our phones.

We drove through Prince George on our way to Alaska. We didn’t stop, so now we want to do a little exploring.

We get settled in our site and disconnect the car. It’s after 5:00 now, and we drive into town. We stop at the BX Pub and have some local beer and prawns. Then we go to the Alpine Pub and have some local beer and wings. These places are nice, but we feel like we are missing the “True Prince George Experience”. 

We stay one more day, and do our laundry. The RV park has a laundry, but there are only two single-load machines, and we have a lot of laundry to do. So, we drive to Spotless Laundromat and use four double-load machines. After that, we go to Save-On-Foods and buy groceries.

We get up and get ready to leave Prince George. After coffee, breakfast, filling the freshwater tank and dumping the holding tanks, we hook up the tow-car and drive to the gas station. On the way out of town, we see the Prince George downtown area we were looking for. It looks like we missed “Summer Fest”.

Alberta

On our way to Alaska, we drove through Oregon and Washington to British Columbia. On our way back, we are going further east through Alberta and Montana. Smoke is no longer an issue, so we decide to spend some time in Jasper and Banff national parks.

Mount Robson Provincial Park

We drive to Robson Meadows Campground in Mount Robson Provincial Park. Many of the campsites are reserved, but there are still some nice ones available for the night. We get a beautiful campsite for $28cad. It’s dry camping, but we’re good on water, sewer and power.

We drive the car a short distance to the Mount Robson Visitors Centre and talk to someone from Jasper National Park. Their biggest campground, Whistler, is closed this year for renovations, but he gives us lots of good information about others that are available.

Jasper National Park

Today we get up at 6:30 because the campground we want to go to is first come, first serve. The big campground, Whistler, is closed for renovations, so the other campgrounds are busy. The drive is supposed to take a little over an hour, but there is road construction, and we cross a time zone and lose an hour. We get to the park entrance gate at 9:50, and pay $66.40cad for four days in the park. We get to Wapiti Campground at 10:15. We get a nice site, with electric, for two nights for $64.60cad.

After we get settled in we drive to the visitors information center to find out about other campgrounds in Jasper and Banff National Parks, and about hiking.

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Then, we drive to Maligne Lake. We stop at Maligne Canyon trail and hike to the fourth bridge and back. Then, we walk to the restaurant to get some food. We split a beef brisket sandwich and local craft beer.

After that, we drive to Maligne Lake and walk the Mary Schäffer Loop. This is a nice easy walk, but it gets muddy and we turn around. Then, we go to the Jasper Brewing Company for craft beer, blackened salmon tacos and Canadian mussels. 

We saw a lot of wildlife today, including several herds of elk, and sheep, and a few bears.

Today, we drive the car to Valley of Five Lakes trail head. We intend to walk the 5.1 miles around all five lakes, rather than the 2.8 miles around lakes 2-5, but it gets too muddy, so we double back and walk about five miles. It’s a scenic hike—nice, despite some rain.

Along the trail we stop and relax in red chairs. Red Chairs are placed at scenic areas of Canadian national parks, for people to sit and enjoy the view.

Then, we drive the car to Pyramid Lake. We stop at Pyramid Beach and Pyramid Island. This is also a very scenic area.

We drive into town and explore the shops. Then, we go back to the Jasper Brewing Company for a beer and poutine. Poutine is a Canadian dish, consisting of fries with gravy, cheese curds and green onions. It’s not the kind of thing we usually eat, but we decided to eat like Canadians today.

Banff National Park

Our plan today is to drive the RV to the Icefields Centre RV park for the night. We were told that it is a big lot with 100 RV spaces. We get there around 10:00 and someone with a walkie-talkie tells us to wait. Then, another person with a walkie-talkie tells us to pull in behind another RV. We assumed that they worked for the park, but now realize they are part of a tour group. They tell us they are here for only four hours.

The view here is awesome, but it’s really busy and spaces are very narrow. There are a bunch of RVs trying to find a place to park—we aren’t sure we want to stay here overnight. We talk to two other RVers looking for spots. We maneuver the RV and car so they can fit in beside us and behind us.

We walk to the Columbia Icefields Discovery Centre. There are lots of people here, booking glacier tours. We watch a short film. There is WiFi here. We check the weather, and see that a wintery-mix is predicted for later. 

We walk back to the RV for lunch. It’s still crazy here. With all that, and the weather prediction, we decide to drive to the Waterfowl Lake Campground. We didn’t stay here long, but we got some great pictures.

After the Columbia Icefield, we pass into Banff National Park. The drive is beautiful. We go from mountain passes with views of glaciers to wooded areas, with lakes and wildlife.

Waterfowl Lake campground is in Banff National Park, and has 116 dry-camping sites. There are several big enough for us. Many of them are unlevel. We find a good site and self-register for one night, using a credit card. It’s $21.50cad, about $17usd, for dry camping. It’s a nice, wooded campground and the sites are spread out. There is no cell service here. The road is terrible—full of potholes.

After we get settled in to our site, we drive the car to some places to look around. We stop at the Waterfowl Lake Lookout—beautiful! Mistaya Canyon—incredible! And Saskatchewan River Crossing—interesting! 

We come back to the RV for dinner. We decide to stay here another day.

Lake Louise

It is cold and rainy today. We had planned to hike, but not in this weather. We cook bacon and eggs, and do some maintenance stuff. We pay for another night and some people tell us how all the campgrounds were filled last weekend. We drive the car south, towards Lake Louise. We stop and check out some of the other campgrounds. We see some nice ones.

We get to Lake Louise Visitor Centre and we have cell phone service. We start looking at campgrounds and see that there are some in Banff. We call and make a reservation.

We walk into the visitor centre to find out what to do here. He tells us that there is no parking at Lake Louise and that we should take a free shuttle bus. We take the information and walk around the shops. 

We don’t really want to get on a shuttle bus, so we decide to drive there and take our chances. We luck out. There is a car leaving just as we get there, so we get a spot to park. We walk to the lake. It is very scenic, but there are lots of people here.

We are encouraged to see some sunshine the next day, but it doesn’t last. We get the RV ready, dump the gray and black water tanks, fill the freshwater tank, and hook up the tow car. We drive to Banff. We don’t follow the GPS route—we take the more  scenic 1A. It would be much better if the skies were clear enough to see the mountains and glaciers.

Banff

We check-in to the Tunnel Mountain I campground, that we reserved yesterday in the Lake Louise Visitor Centre parking lot. Now it is really raining, so we get pretty wet disconnecting the tow car and parking the RV. 

This is a nice campground. The roads look brand new. No potholes. We prepaid $38usd ($49.70caad) for this dry-camping site. We had to buy a fire permit, which we don’t need, and pay a fee for reserving it over the phone.

We eat lunch and drive the car into the town of Banff. It’s still cold (45°F) and raining—no hiking today. We stop at the Hoodoos on the way to town. The hoodoos are oddly shaped rocks. It’s a nice overlook, but too cloudy to see much. The town is busy, but we manage to find a parking spot.

We walk around, and window shop. We stop at the Banff Ave Brew Pub and taste some local craft beers. Then we go to Tommy’s Neighborhood Pub and have some dry-rub ribs. Very good. Then we go to the Rose and Crown, Banff’s oldest pub. We have the pizza of the day, bison, green peppers and onions. It’s delicious.

On the way back to the campground, we stop at Bow Falls. Scenic, but would be better if it wasn’t so cloudy. We drive to the campground and there is a bear right there. We get a few pictures from inside the car.

We’ve been in Canada longer than we expected. We had a great time, but we are ready to get back to the states.

We get up at 7:00 and start getting ready. We know it will be a long day, so we decide not to fill the water tank or dump the holding tanks. We get away from the  campground about 9:00. We get to the US border around 3:00.

Canada has been fun. We expected to be here eight days, but it’s been ten. The national parks are really nice, but they are crowded and expensive. Everybody here is friendly, but these are resort towns. I’ve gotten pretty good at converting kilometers to miles in my head. I’m even starting to do liters to gallons, but we are ready to move on. 

We’ve been on the road for 124 days and driven 10,400 miles. We’ve spent roughly $5,500 on gas and $3,000 on campgrounds. Next is Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.