Beautiful, convenient location; skimpy spaces
Written: Oct 25 '09 (Updated Oct 25 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good location; easy access to Banff and the mountains
Cons: Narrow sites
The Bottom Line: This is a handy place to stay, with easy access to Banff and the beautiful mountains for hiking, skiing, and other sports.
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| Penguinlady's Full Review: Spring Creek RV Park, Canmore, Alberta, CA |
The drive south along the Icefields Highway from Jasper to Banff is one of the most glorious I’ve ever done. The road meanders north-south for 180 miles along the top of the Rockies, following the Continental Divide, snaking between incredible peaks and rapidly melting glaciers. We were fortunate to do the drive on a clear, beautiful summer day, with temperatures in the 80s F. I must have taken about 250 photographs that day, of the fabulous mountains and what remains of the glaciers - Athabasca, one of the biggest, is less than half the size it was when I saw it in 1987 - yelling at Penguinman to stop Elvis (never a last-minute job in a 30' RV towing a Jeep) or hanging out my window, endangering life and limb.
So it was almost with relief that we arrived in Canmore, about 15 miles east of Banff on the way to Calgary. We’d tried for Banff, but it was booked solid and very pricey, even for an RV. So Canmore was a welcome sight.
We’d booked into the Spring Creek RV Park.
LOCATION
The Spring Creek RV Park is located at 1 Spring Creek Gate, Canmore, Alberta, Canada. Phone 403/678-5111, fax 403/678-6270.
It is part of a residential development called Spring Creek Mountain Village. It lies at the east end of Canmore, in the shadow of the east side of the Canadian Rockies, just beyond the end of the business district, across a small creek that runs roughly parallel to the main highway. It’s handy to the downtown area, Banff, and the myriad of parks, lakes, back roads, and trails in the area.
A 10-minute stroll along the creek and over a small foot-bridge will take you to the very pleasant downtown part of Canmore, rife with restaurants and shops.
Right behind - well, a few miles behind - the RV park are the mountains, with a road that goes up from Canmore deep into the wilderness of trees and lakes. It's the way to Spray Lake, as well as several other smaller lakes, and some absolutely gorgeous country. It was intermittently drizzly and overcast when we did the trip - just beautiful.
Distances: Banff 14 miles NW, Calgary 57 miles E, Lake Louise 42 miles NW, Jasper 195 miles NW.
THE PARK
The Spring Creek RV Park is somewhat misnamed; it’s predominantly a park for permanent and monthly residents, with some RV spaces. They are arranged in tidy rows along named streets, with permanent single-and double-wides in a separate section from the long-term RVs, trailers, and 5th wheels.
From what I could tell, there are:
- 11 with water, electric, and sewer (WES) and 15-amp service
- 57 WES spaces with 30-amp service
- 46 WES sites with 50-amp service
- eight sites with water and electric but no sewer, with 15-amp service, and
- nine sites with electric only - no amperage is given.
There are 27 pull-through sites which can accommodate big rigs (40+’ long.)
Each site has a picnic table and a fire ring.
There is a central building, sort of in the middle of the "transient" RV section, with a dump station, bathrooms, phones, drinking water, laundry, and showers.
The services in the central building are handicap accessible.
Propane is available in a secondary center at the far north end of the park, which also has drinking water, showers, and bathrooms.
A playground is located behind the main RV section.
The registration office is in a building near the main gate. You can pick up leaflets and booklets on local attractions, and they will book excursions for you. The staff is friendly and helpful.
Wi-fi service is available at $9.95 Canadian per day. We were never able to get reception, though, so got a full refund after two days of effort.
We didn’t see a store, but firewood is available at the main office.
The usual rules apply: Pets under control at all times, quiet hours after 11:00 pm, no generators or electric heaters, no vehicle washing in the park, and so on. We didn’t see a dog run.
FURTHER INFORMATION
http://www.springcreekrv.ca
WHAT WE LIKED ABOUT IT
Spring Creek Rv Park is clean and well-maintained.
All the services you could need are available, except for a small store, and supplies are easily available in a 10-minute stroll into town.
The location is excellent. It took us about five minutes to drive to the highway that would take us either east to Calgary or north to Banff and points beyond. It’s a pleasant 10-minute stroll along the creek and over a footbridge to town, with its shops, galleries, services, and restaurants
WHAT WE’D CHANGE IF WE COULD
Most of the transient sites are quite narrow. Our neighbor’s picnic table was within five feet of Elvis. I didn’t haul out a tape-measure, but I’d guess that the sites are about 18' wide. The weather was cool and overcast, when it didn’t rain, so we didn’t spend much time at our picnic table or outside in the RV park, but had it been nicer, we would have felt quite crowded. Some of the 30-amp sites are more squared off.
While there are trees around the perimeter of the park, there are very few in the park itself. That, combined with the sight of the coaches all lined up cheek to jowl, makes it look like a parking lot.
SUMMARY AND VERDICT
The general impression we got is that Spring Creek RV park is a corporate entity, and is run as such. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but while the office staff was friendly enough, there was a general air that said, "We’re really more interested in the permanent and monthly residents." We know that many parks are moving in that direction; some are even selling off sites on either a time-share or permanent basis.
So while we have no real complaints, it’s hard to rate it among the highest of our RV park stays. Other places we stayed seemed more personal, less corporate. Three stars.
Recommended:
Yes
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