Banff to Vancouver

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Just before going to bed Dr. Nicole gave me a couple of night time cold and flu tablets, and combined with the red wine I had a great sleep even though I could have had a few more hours. We had the complimentary continental breakfast with Nicole and Christian, before dropping them off at the Banff Hot Springs Hotel and heading on our way. It was great the way we hit it off with them, and is what travelling is all about.
After saying our goodbyes we had to steel ourselves for the long journey back to Vancouver which some people said was 12 hours. The worst bit was that we had to back track to Lake Louise before we could wind our way back to Vancouver through the mountains. A bonus was that we were in the car with the heater on full, as it was -31 degrees celsius when we got up this morning with bright blue skies.
There was still amazing scenery to behold, but I really don't know how people live in such extreme conditions. We passed through towns that were in the shadows of the North Face of huge mountains, causing them to be in the shade all day or just about. A case in point was the very pretty town of Golden where we filled up for petrol. Now Golden had a bit of sunlight at 10.30 in the morning, opposed to some towns we had been through, but as we drove out of the petrol station the radio announcer commented that it was currently -35 degrees celsius in Golden. We were going to call into a park to see some wolves, but we just wanted to get to Vancouver, so we kept driving.
The rest of the trip was fairly smooth with a quick McDonalds stop in Revelstoke, even the Coquihalla Highway was smooth sailing (speed limit 120 km/h). When we made it to Kamloops we decided to just keep going, as I was feeling alright and we were closer to Vancouver than we thought. A town called Hope lies at the end of the Coquihalla Highway and we had to stop here to refuel both ourselves and the car.
There should have been only an hour to go from here, but with only 35 kilometres to go we hit a traffic jam and it took an hour and a half to get to Sal and Phil's. Not the best way to finish a long drive!

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