Lake Louise and Lake Morraine

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After breakfast we walked to the lake with the intentions of canoeing but it was $35 for just half an hour, with it being so huge, half hour wasn’t going to get you far!

Our hotel has an ex guide dog that you can walk, really cool idea but unfortunately for us he has weekends off - probably a good thing, might have been hard to smuggle him into our room!

LAKE MORRAINE

So it was ‘off to the Volvo’! We drove to Lake Morraine (just 15km from lake Louise) along with the rest of Canada it seems as the car park was beyond full, people were parking up to 3kms away. Tim dropped me off (still a dashing husband!) and then had to park the car about 500metres up the road, he did really well compared to some. The lake was the most breathtakingly beautiful blue colour, perhaps even nicer than Lake Louise, and so clear. There was loads of fallen pine tree trunks floating in the lake, and there were some crazy people who thought that it would be a great idea to walk over them. Unfortunately for them, they forgot that the logs were merely floating in the water and were not joined together in any way, they were so surprised when they ended up soaking wet in the freezing water. They were English though, so perhaps it felt like a warm bath to them, haha!

Again, I was bad and fed a chipmunk, he came and took food from my lap. Absolutely the cutest thing ever. A family with 3 little girls were watching us, so I gave them my left over food and on the way back they were all having a great time.

There is a hotel here and it would be equally as nice to stay here as it is at Lake Louise.

LAKE LOUISE GONDALA

Just a short away (and through a 4 way stop sign intersection, which just about did Tim’s head in, was really busy and we were both happy to make it through unscathed) is the Lake Louise Gondala. Had a nice buffet lunch before we went up.

Everyone has to watch a video on safety and wildlife, mainly about bears, before going up. There is a choice of chairlift or gondola up. As it is a really nice sunny day we took the chairlift. And there are signs all along the highway leading here saying how this is supposed to be one of the best places to see bears, so at least we will have a good view - to see not one single bear…. They have electric bear fences half way down the hill to keep the bears away from the hotel so that is enough to at least keep our hopes up.

At the top we found a mini patch of real snow! So we made our first mini snowman and had a mini snowball fight; well Tim threw not so mini snowballs at me anyway! Tim slid down on his sneakers, pity he didn’t ski so well in Dubai, haha!

We went to the bear information centre, watched video on bears and looked at the exhibits of animals in the area and also now extinct animals. Apparently there are 5 million visitors to the area each year and much is done to keep the bears and humans separate (succeeding well from what we can see).

Still no bears.

At the lookout we can see a long way, all the way back to Lake Louise and the glacier topped mountains.

There was a bit of a queue to get back down. Again there is a choice, but most people wanted the chairs so if you didn’t mind the gondala you could get down a little quicker. But since I was with good company waiting for the chairlift wasn’t so bad, and maybe we will finally get a glimpse of a wild bear! So after maybe half hour or so we caught chairlift back down.

Still no bears.

We stopped in at Lake Louise Village shops on the way back and had afternoon tea. Lots of choices for eating here, including a couple of very nice smelling bakeries and a restaurant.

The plan was to walk up to the café near Lake Edna but we got back too late.

After a rest (Tim had a nap) and freshen up, we went back to village shops for tea at the restaurant. Really nice simple food and great service even though it was pretty full. Tim paid the gym another visit and I packed ready to leave tomorrow.

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