Tripometer – 5710 mi
Gas Gauge – 463.001 gal (19.623gal @ US$ 3.94 / gal – Most expensive gas to date, not taking into account the free 10L from CAA!)
Location – Tunnel Mountain Village II Campground, Banff National Park, AB, Canada
Lodging – $29 CAD
Cans of OFF – 4
Sure, no problem, we have plenty of gas…
Waking up this morning we packed up and headed out as quickly as possible. We stopped for a few last minute items at a small grocer in Radium Hot Springs because we knew prices would be much higher in the park. In the same line of thinking, Paul wrote GAS in big letters at the top of the shopping list thinking the cost of gas within the park would probably be ridiculously priced. Paul went to the visitor center while Kelly went to the grocery across the parking lot.
Paul with his nose in maps and pamphlets and Kelly with arm loads full of groceries to put away; neither of us remembered that we wanted to fill up the truck. We didn’t actually remember gas until 20 minutes into the park. At this point the navigator (Paul) decided that there were two small dots on the National Park map to indicate towns on our route to the campground. It wasn’t worth backtracking 20minutes to save a few dollars. We can just stop at one of those. As we passed the first of these ‘towns’ and realized that it was actually a trail head we both began to get concerned. At this point we had no cell signal and no way to see how far it actually was to the next gas station. Great.
We passed the second small dot and again, trail head. Now we knew we were in trouble. We had about 2/3 of a tank when we entered Kootenay National Park. After the second trail head mark we were well below a ¼ tank and falling fast. We were not going to make it to the next (at this point confirmed via maps) gas station at Castle Junction. We decided that we had better squeeze the last of the gas for the generator into the truck tank – about a gallon. The next 30 minutes was a tense ride just waiting for the engine to die but we made it to the gas station and parked next to the gas pump that said… ‘Out of Order’.
We had an afternoon snack and enjoyed the views of Castle Mountain from the gas station parking lot in Castle Junction. CAA (The Canadian version of AAA) arrived about an hour and a half later with 10L of gas to get us into the town of Banff. We were only allowed 10L as the other 10L in the tow truck driver’s can had to go to the fellow parked next to us in the gas station parking lot. (Misery loves company!)
We moved on down the road into Banff to fill up and get to our campsite. We were blown away by the view at our site. We booked the last campsite available and sure enough got one of the best sites in the campground. That is Mt. Rundle framing our camper out in the picture above. Astonishing!
The temperature was due to drop into the 30’s tonight, so for the first time this trip we turned on the camper’s furnace at the lowest temp setting so we didn’t get too cold in bed. By the time we called it a night the temp was well into the 40’s. The rain had just started to fall as Paul turned out the last light.