TRAVEL DAY
From: Whistlers Campground, Jasper National Park, Jasper, Alberta.
To: Meadow Campground, Mount Robson Provincial Park, Valemount, BC.
Day 330 – Here’s what happened after we received notice we had to depart Whistlers Campground.
We already had reservations for 10 nights beginning Sunday, September 11 in Banff National Park. The logical thing to do would be to extend that stay by 5 more nights. We checked; that campground was booked. We tried other Banff campgrounds; they were booked. Hmmm, now what. Go backwards. Back to British Columbia, because with most of this campground leaving to travel south, getting a site on the Icefield Parkway wasn’t going to happen.
It was 33 degrees last night! Brrrr. We packed up as quickly as we could. The girls were like, “Uh-oh, they’re rushing around and things are being put away. Never a good sign.” A couple of them have taken to what we call “self storing”. Rather than hiding and waiting to be found when it is time to be put into the bedroom to travel, or glaring at us from a heated pad as we move stuff around for 45 minutes, two of them slink into the bedroom to self-store and pick their spot in advance on the blankets & towels that cover the bed when we travel. Rob made record time putting up the screened tent. We were on a roll!
We waited in line to dump tanks and fill with fresh water. (We prefer not to travel with any tank full, but we didn’t know where we’d be staying and if they would have water available.) Obviously, lots of people were packing up to leave and dumping at the same time we were. Whistlers Campground is the largest campground in Canada. Luckily, they have eight dump stations. After dumping we joined the steady line-up of people departing the campground. It was 10:55 a.m. (Alberta time) and cloudy, 40 degrees.
We were sad that we had to leave early because there was more to do that we hadn’t done yet: riding the Jasper Sky Tram to the top of the mountains near the campground; a 5-1/2 hour tour we had scheduled for tomorrow – a boat cruise of Maligne Lake & bus tour and short hike to a waterfall in the Maligne Canyon; on a sunny day checking out the upper Icefield Parkway; and maybe kayaking on Miette River. But we’d already done a lot.
We drove north on Highway 93 a short distance to the crossroads of the 93 and Highway 16 at the entrance to the city of Jasper. Jasper looked empty, particularly compared to how busy they’d been on the holiday weekend. We turned left and headed west on the 16. What a change of plans; it felt bizarre to be heading back into British Columbia. We crossed back into the Pacific time zone, therefore getting the hour back that we’d lost the previous Thursday. BC was still just as beautiful and it wasn’t smoky out.
Our goal was to try to get a campsite at Mount Robson Provincial Park. The scenery there was incredible and we’d already checked out two of the Park’s campgrounds when we were there the week before. We considered it a privilege to be able to stay close to this majestic mountain. And, we figured most people would be heading south down the Icefield Parkway. Other than trying to find a place to stay, we were concerned about gasoline. We needed gas in both the RV and the Honda.
Mount Robson looked different than when we’d seen it before – they’d gotten snow and it was even more beautiful. At the base of the mountain, there is a large parking lot for the visitor’s center, a small cafe’, and a gas station. We decided to get gas in the RV first before driving through the two campgrounds nearby to look for a campsite. They were out of gas! They’d already been hit by the mass of people leaving Jasper National Park. We drove to Meadow Campground, the closest of the two nearby campgrounds. On the way in, we stopped to talk with the campground host. She said they’d been warned last night that Whistlers was closing and well over 1,000 campsites would be emptying out today and tomorrow. She recommended looking at their ten first-come, first-served campsites; the rest of the campsites were reservations only, but if one of the reservable sites was unoccupied and the post had an “available” sign on it, we could camp in one of those for 1 to 2 nights. We drove through and went back to the Visitor’s Center (the only place with Wi-Fi) to try to find a campsite we could reserve for all five nights. There were a few that were available; we wrote down the numbers of the campsites and went back to check out those particular sites, comparing them with the first-come, first-served sites we’d just looked at. We chose site #62, a very nice campsite. We parked the RV to hold the site until we could get it reserved officially, let the girls out and gave them food (we were hungry for lunch, too, but who has time to eat in times like these), and drove in the Honda back to the Visitor’s Center.
It was 12:50 p.m. Alberta time, 11:50 a.m. Mount Robson time, and when we got back to the Visitor’s Center, a gas truck was just leaving – YAAA – we were able to fill the Honda’s gas tank. It was 52 degrees and cloudy. We made our campsite reservations, then went to the cafe’ for lunch. We each had a Beyond burger and then we took several items back to the RV from the bakery for dessert in the evenings.
Returning to the RV, the girls had settled in, but we still had to unpack and set up camp. Rob put up the screened tent. We liked our site. The campground was rapidly filling up, but we had nice trees all around us. Luckily we had gained an hour when crossing the time zone line because we didn’t sit down to relax until later in the afternoon. As suspected, we had no connection, no Wi-Fi, nothing. Our site had no hook-ups but generators were allowed during specific hours. We could access the internet if we drove somewhere and found a signal, but we were too tired to go anywhere.
For more detailed information about Whistlers Campground in Jasper National Park, click here.