Friday, August 28, 2009 - Camping in Banff

This morning we woke up around 7:30 to start getting the car packed and the girls ready for our Banff camping trip. Dean’s brother Tom and his family (wife – Tara and boys – Adam 5 and Ben 4) were visiting from Yellowknife and we were all going together. We left the house around 10:30 and arrived at Tunnel Mountain Village I around noon.

Our first step was to set up our tent while the Northern Nauglers set up their tent trailer. We made a lunch of sandwiches and Becca just sat in her high chair which we strapped onto one of the sides of the picnic table. It was great to watch the cousins run around and play with each other. We got two campsites side by side and a nice clearing in the woods right behind them with lots of room to play.

After lunch we headed into the town and went for a nice long walk along the river to see the falls. It was quite hot so we stopped by the river to dip our toes and then headed to Cows for some ice cream. We then set out to find a liquor store so the adults could have a treat. We stumbled across one called “A Liquor Store.” – it sounded good however we could only fit inside a few at a time because it was the smallest store I have ever been in. It wasn’t a big problem and we got what we needed and headed back to the campsite.

At the campsite, things were rough with Rebecca because we couldn’t really put her down to crawl around. The ground was quite dirty and she was always picking things up and putting them in her mouth. It meant that I always had to hold her which made it quite frustrating to make dinner and eat. Fortunately we just had an easy meal of hamburgers barbequed on Tom and Tara’s barbeque on their trailer. Tara did the dishes in the sink in their trailer and I got Becca ready for bed. We had her set up in her playpen in the tent and I had lots of blankets for her. She cried for quite a while and it broke my heart but eventually she calmed down and fell asleep.

We roasted marshmallows with the other kids and Isabella really wanted to tell scary stories with the flashlight so we indulged her for a bit. The older kids went to bed quite easily. We had our campfire at Tom and Tara’s site so that we were farther away from Becca sleeping, and I was thrilled to find that she stayed asleep while I went in and put Bella to bed. We unzipped one of the windows so that Bella could peek out at us over at the campfire so that she wouldn’t be scared at being alone. She had a few issues of falling off the air mattress but she eventually fell asleep.

The rest of us had a nice visit around the fire and enjoyed our drinks. We went to bed and were quite comfortable in our tent. I had a hard time falling asleep and around 1am Bella woke up to go to the bathroom so I took her. I fell asleep quite easily after that.