Scenic Banff is right along the Trans Canada Highway within the Banff National Park boundaries. It is just over an hour's drive from Calgary. Bordering Banff National Park are several other parks, like Yoho on the British Columbia Side, and a few provincial parks, like the Bow Valley park. We pulled over to take a picture with the first mountains and park sign.
We pulled over again a short while later to get some mountain backdrop photos for Siobhan
Just around the corner was the town of Canmore. We stopped there for fuel....for us not the car, which in Canada we call Tim Horton's coffee. We ate a lot of Tim Horton's on this road trip in retrospect..in Swift Current, Medicine Hat, Calgary, and Canmore. I thought it would be good to get a picture of Shibby, on the last adventure, upgraded from the back of the scooter to the passenger seat of the car, even with a cupholder! We are moving up in the world indeed!
I knew just the spot to pull over and get a bear shot, in case we didn't see a real one on our travels.
Eeeeeek |
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Once there we checked into our hotel in Banff and took a stroll through the townsite. We popped into some of the little shops. Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I found a huge Christmas store with this little reminder inside. I left with a few bags to further slow me down. We also ruined our appetite by indulging at a sweet shop along the way (the chocolate macaroons were baseball sized).
Across the bridge and onto a path underneath there were quiet reflections on the water.
We stopped for a bite to eat at Earls on the walk home, then fell into our bunks exhausted. We started the next morning with a Starbucks coffee at the base of the gondola to the Sulphur Mountain Lookout.
Always nice to see the home flag flying.
Years ago I hiked up to the top. But today we could blame it on lack of time and the limp so we hopped the gondola. It's a nice ride up with a coffee in the morning.
Once at the top, there is another short trek to the old weather lookout.
The goal |
And it gave me the opportunity to take several hundred squirrel pictures!
We hiked back to the old lookout, which is slated for a rebuild to a more modern facility....I have to say I like this old building, and hate to see it replaced with a shiny, sharp edged, office building like structure like they have planned, but it is indeed wearing and tearing. I suppose in 20 years the new structure won't look so horribly modern.
The old (and still standing) gondola st! |
We trekked back, took the gondola down, and got ready for the next adventure!
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