Banff National Park

It was cold, rainy, and dreary last night. And the morning didn’t look much better. Plus, the Banff forecast for today was looking like we should be expecting more of the same for the entire day…




Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada was recommended to Megs and me by our mother, Barbara. She had visited the Lake Louise area earlier this year and told us it was beautiful. And it was a good destination for us between Glacier National Park and Vancouver, so we put it on the list!



We got up early and arrived in Banff about 8am so that we could get some visitor information and plan out our day. Or rather, Megs got up early and drove while I slept in the back… I do the late night driving and she does anything that is really early. It works out.



We discovered a few things upon entering Banff. First, the weather had not improved. Second, the visitor’s center didn’t open until 9am. And, lastly, Banff National Park is basically the Yellowstone of Canada. The town was really neat but has clearly been built up to service all the tourists who visit the park…

And, after we picked up our visitor information, we found that all the sights in the park can be driven up to or only require a short walk. Which was probably for the best, since we only had one day to see as much of Banff as we could. Not to mention the fact that we were both pretty tired from the last couple days of hiking…



We also discovered that Lake Louise was actually 45 kilometers away from the town of Banff. We started off, but decided to stop along the way at Johnston Canyon. It was really cool, boasting several waterfalls and a steep gorge along a 5 km hike…

We found that the weather had noticeably cleared so far on our way north from Banff and were delighted to find sunshine waiting for us when we made it to Lake Louise!! The lake is fed by the glaciers farther up the valley and was created after the last ice age when the massive glacier filling the valley melted, leaving behind a dam of rubble. We decided to walk a couple kilometers along the gorgeous aqua blue lake…

We then made our way over to Lake Moraine, set in a cradle of 10 peaks!!

The first thing we found when we walked down to the shore was a huge rock pile that looked exactly like the Agrocrag from the Nickelodeon tv show Guts! Fond memories of that show… So, obviously, we scrambled up the thing as fast as possible, dodging smoke, confetti, falling Styrofoam rocks, and huge inflatable boulders…

Do, do, do ya have it! Guts!



From the shore Lake Moraine seemed a dark gray color, but once we reached the top of the Crag, we found that it actually had a nice blue color similar to its neighbor Lake Louise…

After successfully eating our lunch, even though we were under heavy attack the whole time from the local fat chipmunk population, we headed out along the scenic highway north of Lake Louise. I will grant that you can’t really drive into the heart of the American Rockies, but man, the Canadian Rockies are pretty incredible…

With the sun about to go down, we came up on the Mistaya Canyon. We weren’t sure what to expect, but the Johnston Canyon had been pretty cool so we decided to check it out. Wow it was really amazing! Over the years the water had carved a skinny, twisting gorge at least 100 feet deep in places!! And it was a cool time to see it to with the sun setting in the back ground…

Of course, I had to play with shadows a bit…

With the light fading, we made our way back to Lake Louise, but stopped a few times along the way to check out some of the views and glaciers…

One in particular was called the crowfoot glacier because of its three separate ice flows below the main glacier. And a real crow actually stopped by so we could make a comparison!!

Wow what a long day! But we weren’t finished yet… Once we got back to our campsite at the Lake Louise village, we had dinner and then went and did some laundry. Of course the place only had two washers and two dryers, and we actually miscalculated and ran out of Canadian money. So, not only did we get to bed really late, but we ended up with damp clothes strewn all about the RV! Looked like a disaster area…



We weren’t too concerned though. The plan for the next day was a long driving day across Alberta and British Columbia to Vancouver! Plenty of time to get our lives back together…