And So It Begins.

The Great Banff-Glacier Camping Trip Spectacular!

This is not the trailer we will be staying in, for ten people we needed something more 'Murican in size, so this little wheeled domicile is for illustrative purposes only.

For the last couple of days I have been prepping like mad. And no, I am not stuffing plastic buckets full of Mylar bags of grain and O2 absorbers, rather I have been getting ready to hit the road with me mateys! Last fall I was sitting on the couch with my dear friend whom aside from being totally awesome and the mother of 5 (AAAAHHHH!) kids, is also somewhat of a cyborg as she has a dodgy ticker. Let's just say we have to keep her away from electrical storms as she has a pacemaker and defibrillator device keeping her alive due to a genetic heart failure situation. Anyway, life could end for her at any moment. I suppose that could be said for us all, but as we live a whopping 80ish miles from Canada and none of her family had ever been to the lovely country, we both looked at each other and said:

"Let's go"

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Now you might be thinking that only crazy people would think that stuffing ten people, six of which are kids into a 36 foot fifth wheel for a week would be fun. I think it is going to be awesome! There will be full contact rummy, To The Death Munchkin, I think we bought about 11 cases of pop pancreatitis, and GRAVY with my fries (I love Canada!).

Growing up in Alaska meant that we drove through Canada a lot as a kid, but my husband and children have never visited a province so it's an overdue visit. Banff National Park is one of my favorite places ever to meander through, and in the glad spirit of imminent travel happiness I will share an anecdote from my last visit to the mountain paradise.

On one of our trips down south my parents decided to take us on the scenic route through Jasper and Banff. My brother and I were all of 12 and 14 years old on this particular journey. As we lived on the edge of a glacier, the whole ice field thing, while cool, was probably not as exciting for my brother and I as most. Bears were a daily thing for us to run into, and we grew up eating elk, but the incredible amount of people from all over the world blew our minds!!

Mom and Dad decided to rent us a chalet for a couple of days, and while Mom was registering our crew for the night my brother and I became fascinated by this Japanese man conducting a phone call. We didn't really care about his business, rather that he had the phone cord stretched clear across the small lobby. It was like a clothesline, stretched a good eight feet across the tiny room. What was so fantastic was the man kept shouting "Hi" into the headset. Louder and louder he shouted that word and bigger and bigger did our smiles become. Finally the phone and cord could bear no more stress and rocketed out of the man's hand across the room and smacked into the wall behind the registration counter. The entire room went silent. Bro and I looked at my dad, all of us were struggling with a case of the bulge eyes. Everyone in our family gets it when we are trying to contain a gut busting session of laughing.

"HI SORRY!!" The poor embarrassed man shouted, bowed, spun on his heel, and departed.

They snap when they reach their limits...
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To be fair, Dad lost it first. Bro and I bolted for our pickup and proceeded to giggle for a good solid fifteen minutes. I am pretty sure that I experienced some oxygen deprivation and subsequent brain damage from that moment. It was worth it. Mom chewing all of us out for abandoning her was worth it too.

Oh I cannot wait for the situations, the hijinks, the scenery, the Smarties fights (seriously, how do they make a candy with a shell that hard?). Perhaps my greatest anticipated part of the journey is the 330 mile drive from my house to the campground, for I have three teenage girls riding with me and my husband in our car. I have already formulated a road trip playlist called: "Summatrippin" full of songs that I am going to annoy them with. Nothing like applying oneself to a task with some good old fashioned maximum effort!

In the spirit of happy travels I shall leave you all with a song that pretty much fits my frame of mind, and no worries my dear followers, I shall check in over the week as often as I can!

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And as always, unless otherwise cited, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's super-duper excited and synced iPhone.

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