Success! and relief

Our thought was to spend the summer months in Canada again, only this year in the western provinces, particularly the Rocky Mountain National Parks of Banff, Jasper, Kootenay and Yoho. Knowing how popular these parks are I contacted the National Parks late last year and was told that reservations at these parks wouldn't be available until the spring. About six weeks ago, I called again and was told that we could make a reservations at the Jasper campgrounds on Wednesday, April 1st, 8 a.m., Mountain Daylight Time, Banff & Lake Louise on Thursday, April 2nd, 8a.m., MDT, Kootenay and Waterton Lakes on April 7th at 8 a.m. For the past week, we have been visiting the Parks Canada reservation site and reviewing all the campgrounds and sites that meet our requirements ( 30 foot trailer, electricity, showers) and trying to select the perfect site out of the hundreds that are available. It was kind of like the proverbial needle in a haystack. 

Because we wanted to stay two weeks in each of two different parks, Frederick signed up for an account (I already had one from last year). Yesterday and this morning, we got up early, had our breakfast and coffee so we would be wide awake and got ready to hit the "reserve" button at 9 a.m. our time. Yesterday morning Frederick was successful in scoring the campsite we had selected in the Jasper campground of Wabasso (on the Icefields Parkway) right away, but I was shut out of our first choice in the Wapiti Campground and had to quickly move over to the Whistlers Campground for the two weeks we wanted to be near downtown Jasper. The result was that we have reserved campsites in Jasper for 4 weeks. But we knew that the more difficult task was getting campsites in Banff, a much more popular park.

This morning, at 8:30 a.m., we both signed on to the Parks Canada reservation website and put in the required information for the campsites we had selected, mine for June 29 - July 12 and Frederick for June 15 - 28. Waiting nervously, we finally counted down the last 10 seconds from 8:59.50 and clicked on the reserve button. After a moment's delay, we each were moved onto the next screen to complete the six steps to confirm and pay to make the reservation confirmed. We were so happy that we thought we were successful in each getting our first choice, but things began to bog down. Instead of moving from screen to screen, we got stuck on one screen or another. We figured everyone was trying to complete their reservations at the same time and the system was overwhelmed and all we had to do was wait. That is when we noticed that there was a 20 minute time-out period. Both of us got timed out and we thought we had lost our reservations. We both logged in and I was successful in securing the same site for the same time period, but Frederick, after much agitation, had to go to our second choice.

The upshot is that we have four confirmed reservations for 8 weeks in Banff and Jasper. Now we have to wait until next week to see about Kootenay. Yoho's park at Kicking Horse Camp Ground doesn't take reservations and the time frame that we want to be in Waterton Lakes/Glacier is past the time that reservations are taken. For both of these campground it will be first come first served but that shouldn't be a problem in late summer (Yoho) and September for Waterton Lakes.

We are so relieved to know that what we planned for the summer will now be possible!

Our campsite in Cedar Hill is one of the nicest we have ever stayed in because it is quite isolated and nicely wooded.

Although we don't spend a lot of time outside in the campsite, it is spacious and is frequently visited by two brown rabbits, one big and one small. This afternoon we also saw a roadrunner out in the road - where else?