Camperlife in Canadian Rockies
Calgary-Banff-Jasper -We were planning this road trip through the Canadian Rockies ,considered one of the most picturesque places in the world.
As hotels turned out too expensive and the affordables ones mostly pretty far from the actual places we wanted to go; we started looking for alternate options..and bam! discovered wicked campers. We did not want to go for RVs as they are too big for 2 people and are not allowed in most of the curvy mountain roads .This was a perfect fit .It had bed for 2 , plenty of place to store our luggage, kitchen with all utensils, stove and on top of that it had 2 picnic chairs and a table .What more can you ask, right ?!?It is cheaper than RV and makes life lot more simple. You only need to book camping sites for the night.
We took a cab from Calgary airport to the pickup location of the wicked campers .Note - They do not have a wicked camper store in Calgary . It is a remote pickup and dropoff location for them . So you do not get to choose your van . It is pre-selected based on your bookings .But the good part is that ,the Calgary location had a dropoff key facility . So even if the latest return time is 4pm in the evening , you can choose to drop off they keys later in the night .We had not done this before , was little skeptical .But the person at the counter was very friendly and tried to answer most of our questions.Our insurance does not cover for campers . We therefore, took the wicked camper insurance that comes with roadside assitance.Luckily did not need to use that .
Comes with its own security system too ,huh !:)
We did not have to do that either .It was a 1998 Cheverolet van with over 200K miles on it . But it was in good shape. And beacuse of its loud colors we did get a lot of attention on the road :)
As the daily routine started to fade in the rear view mirror, we were eager to embrace what lays at the horizon ahead of us, as we began our roadtrip with this funky cozy temp-home
Our Camp setup
Our tired feet hanging hapily in the hammock
Preparing lunch in the middle of the woods
..And voila lunch is ready
Driving the van through the Bow Valley Parkway in search of wild life.
There nothing like a cup of warm tea in your hands in a super cold morning ... Sipping through it , made our sumptuous breakfast :)
Tall buildings have been replaced by high mountains and busy gas stations by beautiful ones.
A lazy afternoon
And here comes the picnic chairs and table . So we would pick a quiet beautiful spot , take out our paraphernalia, and have our self made lunch .
You can check out wicked campers at : http://www.wickedcampers.com.au/. They are a New Zealand campervan company . They have campers for 2+ people too .They do have good customer care service . We highly recommend them .Happy Camping !!