Rotel Visit

Rotel Tours is a European tour company that tours North America with huge red buses that also have sleeping and cooking facilities  They carry a driver, driver's helper and 24 passengers. Sleeping is done in three banks of "drawers" in the back. Each sleeping drawer has a small window as you can see in one of the photos. They arrived at seven o'clock last night and started preparing to leave at six this morning. The road outside the park is so narrow they had to back in and back out in the morning. The power lines rubbed along the top as they backed through the gate. I would not have thought they could have made it.

Here we are!

Can we drive in straight? Nope!

I can back in though! 

Made it!

This looks like a good spot.

Right beside these friendly Canadians.

Everybody helps set up. This is the deck outside the three levels of sleeping drawers.

The kitchen slides out on the other side.

The kitchen.

One of the sleeping drawers. They call them "Suites".

Everyone has a job. It was almost dark when they arrived and a bunch of men started setting up the deck used to climb into the individual sleeping drawers while a ten foot long table was set up on the kitchen side and women started cutting up meat and vegetables and making salads while other men grabbed buckets to get water. Huge pots were put on the stove and within minutes a stew was brewing. They made stew the last time we ran into them as well. I do not know how varied their meals are. Their cooking facilities do not seem that extensive.

They have a huge battery bank that charges while they drive so they do not have to plug in. The only thing they needed outside power for was for the passengers to charge their phones, laptops and cameras. I did not check but I suspect they have their own WIFI. Quite a few of them were using hand held devices and the park WIFI is not working.

This tour was all Germans. Mostly older people but also a pair of young couples. The last time we ran into them a couple of years ago there were Germans, French and Austrians. These tours are very popular with Europeans. We have also seen them in Canada touring Banff and Jasper. Not for me.