Give us a Hint!

It will be a full day of driving from Kelowna to Jasper - about 9 hours. Every turn we are gazing out the windows, wow, wow, wow!! Rip and Przem take turns driving; Rip is giving Przem instructions just like he does with me, so I am consoled that he is just a "back seat driver" in the front seat when he is not at the wheel. Give us hint, Alberta! We find that the road signs are few and far between, and we somehow missed the turn to Lake Louise for gas and we go a long, long stretch with no sign of gas coming up. Oh no, not this again!! Finally we get to a place called "The Crossing". The gas here is $1.9299 per litre - can you believe it? But they have a monopoly - Jasper is still a couple of hours away and there has been no gas station for a long time. I have booked a campsite at Jasper/Hinton KOA for 2 nights! Now you would think that this campsite would be reasonably close to Jasper, would you not? And the advertising says that it is 13 km from the East entrance to Jasper National Park! We get to Jasper; it is 9 pm. we find a spot for some dinner - and we ask our waitress how far it is to Hinton. She says 45 minutes to 1 hour!!! Really?? We are ready to quit, but press on. Rip says we will be setting up the tent in the dark; but we are amazed. We arrive at the campsite at 10:45 pm; the sun has not yet set. We sit around our picnic table sharing a nice bottle of wine from Mission Hill with candles glowing (there is no fire pit). We go to "bed" around 12:30 am and there is still a glow in the sky. We think we might pack up camp and look for another spot tomorrow closer to Jasper - we like the KOA campground, but really, give us a hint that it is a long haul from Jasper where we want to be!!