2015 Pacific Northwest and Canada

Journal Pages
 Click a pic

Chelan & Coeur d'Alene

Glacier National Park

Calgary

Banff & Lake Louise

Rest of the Trip

Banff and Lake Louise

Even poking along we got to Banff too early to check in, so we drove up to Lake Louise and looked around and had a cuppa. The Fairmount Hotel looked quite grand, but for something like $500 a night it should. The lake was lovely but the village was way too small to offer much choice in restaurants.

        The Fairmount and Lake Louise

We got checked in and had a second floor room with a balcony big enough that we could sit there after dinner and sip a bottle of wine and watch the world go by. To get to tourist information or lunch or dinner we had to go past a large hotel nearby and it seem that every time we went past it there was another bus-load of totally unconscious tourists milling about on the sidewalk and making passing them impossible.

On the way to dinner we passed an intersection with the sign you see below. For those of you who remember Rocky and Bullwinkle and Boris and Natasha and the famous line, "Moose and squirrel are on train." you'll love it.

   The intersection of Moose and Squirrel

The next day we took the gondola to the top of the nearby mountain, had lunch and looked around. Quite a sight from up here. We could see the hotel where we were staying and our balcony, the nearby mountains and much of Banff.

       Our hotel and Banff and Tunnel Mountain

       The gondola visitor's center and the gondola

There is a cosmic ray monitoring station (I believe that is what it was called but I have no idea what it does) up from the visitor's center. We hiked up there and saw an interesting layered rock formation and a cute chipmunk on a rock with lots of lichen.

       Layered rock and the chipmunk

We drove north the following day past Lake Louise and up to Jasper. Signs told us to watch for wild life but we had already seen our token chipmunk. It was another short drive just poking along. We took a look at Jasper but then drove on to Vailmount, BC. This is not much more than a wide spot in the road with a surprising number of hotels. Apparently lots of people choose to stay her to see Jasper because it is much less expensive. We stayed in a B&B outside of 'town' and it was very quiet and comfortable.