The Great White North

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We had a beautiful drive to Banff on Monday...weather was good and the roads clear and almost traffic free!

The Rockies are higher and more jagged than the Cascades...

The drive was beautiful...we saw a coyote, an elk, big-horned sheep, many deer...many parts of the road are fenced to prevent road kill, but you still have to be alert. We didn't see any bears...although we were in grizzly territory!

We arrived in Banff in the late afternoon, and checked into our hotel, located across from the Bow River on a quiet street. (Quiet was important, since we had been woken by the drunks at closing time in Nelson for the past two nights...a big drinking town, it seems....) We explored the town (not as charming as Nelson, and big on shopping and with more tourists than Nelson) and then had dinner at the tiny, best rated restaurant, "Nourish", (which happens to be vegetarian!), where the non-vegetarian cook/owner is also the waiter and cashier.

The next day, we visited the Banff Springs Lodge, built by the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1888 to attract tourists from the East. It is beautiful and very, very big....Next we drove to the nearby falls and then headed north for a short drive to Lake Louise. Bill had been there in 1948 with his parents and again in 1998 with Jason and my parents had been there in the 1990s and raved about it....

The lake was still frozen, and the ice a pale blue...we could see the very tip of the glacier at the end of the lake...we hiked around one side, in the mushy snow and 70 degree sunny weather!

Next we headed north on the Ice Fields Parkway, one of the truly spectacular roads of the world.....we decided not to continue on to Jasper, since snow was predicted for that evening and next few days. We headed back south and then west to Glacier National Park (the Canadian one). We had planned to spend the night around Vernon and then continue west to Vancouver the next day, to look for some mid-century modern furniture.

We had difficulty finding a good place to eat dinner (fast food does come in handy at times like this..) and then a hotel we liked....we thought of going directly to Vancouver and then thought we might as well just go home....we put "Go Home" into the GPS and found that we would arrive about 1:45 am...Bill was up for the driving... and off we went. Over many more passes, through a rainy patch, and back into the USA with only a minute at the border....and home 45 minutes later.

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Photos

On the terrace of the Banff Springs Lodge
Golf Course and Falls are below us.

Entering Banff National Park
We paid a fee of about $14 for a 24 hour pass.

Looking across a river valley
All the red trees have been killed by the pine beetle. Before humans interferred, forest fires would prune the forests and keep the beetle in check. Now all the trees are about the same age, the prime for the beetles.

Two big recent fires burnt about 12% of this forest.
The fires are good for the forest...opening it up for new growth.

Banff Springs Lodge
It has about 770 rooms....and has a staff of 1200 at peak seasons...it is owned by a company who has hotels in Kenya...it was strange see them advertised there in the Rockies!

Closeup of rock formation
The rocks here are slate and limestone. This area was once sea bottom that hardened and then was pushed up by plates moving against each other.

Lake Louise and the glacier
A skating rink had been cleared in the forground, but the ice was too soft to skate now. It is a more than a meter thick in some winters.

Have a seat...
The snow was still quite deep...

Frozen waterfall
This was as far as we could hike...too slippery to go up too far....and avalanche danger along with bears...

Ice Fields Parkway
Photos don't do it justice....

Comments

[patricia johnson]

nice trip
good pictures. I have taken that route several times. I like to end my trip in Radium Hot Springs. It's nice. Natural Hots springs swimming pool. then i head to the farm in Id... Me and Brigitte are going to Mexico, Belze, gautemala and central america and hopefully if have time go to Peru in June. Are you going to be out and about in that area then? we want to be back here in august.Patricia

[Steve Collins]

Wait! Hold on!
Don't head back - there's a mountain to climb... ;-)