Banff-Lake Louise and Moraine Lake

So this probably wasn’t my best planning.  We had to get up for a 9:00 shuttle to Lake Louise.  Which doesn’t sound bad.  And really didn’t expect it to be a problem.  But since we got in after 11 and had to unpack the car and get settled it was after midnight before we went to bed.  After the long day, the next morning came really early.  But we got up and drove to the Park and Ride in Banff for the shuttle to Lake Louise.  What was really disappointing was we made the shuttle on time, and then sat on the bus in the lot for 20 minutes while they waited for people.  WTF?

Anyway, we made it to Lake Louise, which is the most famous attraction around Banff.  It is really beautiful, but like a lot of national parks, was VERY crowded.  Had to work our way through the Instagram crowd to get a decent picture of the lake, which again, is really nice.  We decide to hike around to the back of the lake and then we saw a sign for a hike up to the tea house. For the record, this hike was not my idea.  I even pointed out it was 1,400 feet up and 3.4 km long. Uphill all way, this hike is pretty tough on the feet and body. Waited in 2 really slow lines, Deb for the bathroom and me to order some food.  The snack at the tea house was good though. 

We then walked back down (hard on the toes) and boarded the shuttle to Moraine Lake.  Moraine Lake is also very beautiful. This was probably partially because of how tired we were to start the day and also because of the hike to the tea house, but we were too tired to hike anymore. So we relaxed on the patio, did some people watching and shared a sausage roll. 

We then took the shuttle back to Banff for dinner, ate at Tooloulos. We got kinda lucky as it started to rain just as we found the restaurant.  About a minute after we sat down at the table in the front window, it started pouring really hard.  So we were dry and had the fun of watching other people scramble around in the rain.   Food just OK, Deb had cajun shrimp, I had scallops. The most memorable part of the meal was we discovered that a Thai chili pepper is REALLY hot.  It was on her plate, apparently just as a decoration, and we both took a bite, which we will never do again!  

After dinner we walked around Banff a bit, it’s a nice tourist town with a lot of the standard gift shops and lots of restaurants.  We saw a sign for beaver tails, which I had heard we had to get.  These things are freshly fried dough with sweet toppings.  Since we were on vacation we got ours with ice cream on them. Very, very good.  Perfect way to end the day before heading home for some much needed rest.

Icefields Parkway

We started the day at Mount Edith Cavell, where we were able to walk about a mile up to a pond formed by the runoff from the glacier.  It's a mostly paved walk with a hike through a bunch of broken rocks down to the pond.  Not too bad, but it is all sloped.  It was pretty cool to see the water running down into the pond and got a good view of the glacier itself.

We then headed out for the Icefields Parkway which takes us down to Banff.  This is also where we, OK, I, made a logistical error.  Rather than getting gas before we headed out to Mount Edith Cavell I decided to get it afterward.  Unfortunately I didn't look at the map closely enough and though the gas station at the edge of town was right by the start of the Iceway.  It was actually back several miles.  So, our start in the parkway was delayed about an hour.

 

Our first stop was Athabasca Falls.  Not the biggest falls, but the water was really raging through this area.  The coolest part is you walk right over the top and can get really close to the water and the falls. We then moved a little way down the parkway to Sunwapta Falls.  These are bigger than the Athabasca falls and very scenic.  We walked around a bit to get some different views of the falls and the river that feeds them and got back on the road.

 On the way to the Columbia Icefield we stopped at Tangle Falls.  These are right at the side of the road and aren't huge falls, but they are big enough and are really cool as the water cascades down several steps of limestone rock.  We could have walked up to the top but just went up a little bit, we got the idea and it looked really neat from where we were.

We then got to Athabasca Glacier, Deb remembers coming to this same glacier as a kid.  It was really poignant to see how far the glacier has receded since then.  They have signs there that show where the glacier was in different years in the past.  I don't know the actual distances, but it has receded ALOT.  Interesting to see the scraped landscape it leaves behind as it recedes. We walked as far as we could, but didn't take the little tour to the glacier itself, maybe next time.

Here is where we wished we had more time, as it would have been nice to stop in at the Icefields center, but we wanted to keep moving.  This proved to be a good decision though, as we ended up getting stuck in construction where they had a temporary stop light due to the road being one lane for both ways over a bridge.  This added a good 20 minutes to our drive.

Pretty hungry by this point and so we stopped at the Rocky Mountain cafe, as it was the last food until Banff, and we knew that would be hours away.  This gets back to wishing we could have stopped at the Icefields center, as they have food there, and while I'm sure it is overpriced there's no way it was as bad as this place.  Talk about gouging people for bad food, we paid exorbitant prices for not great food.  The only plus is it did fill us up and we didn't get sick from it.

We then drove on to Peyto Lake.  We were lucky enough to see this right around sunset-awesome view.  Might be the most incredible view I've ever seen.  Bonus- very easy and short walk to the view point.  After spending some time just soaking it in, we got back on the road.

We were anxious to get into our Vrbo as we were running out of daylight, but as we drove by bow Lake we had to stop.  Another stunning view that we had to get some pictures of.  We didn't hike at ll, just took the pics from the roadside.  Beautiful.

We got to Vrbo after 11 and it was DARK around there, had some trouble finding the right code to get into the underground parking but we did eventually get in.

A very long, great day, with stunning views everywhere.  We will definitely have to come back and do a more leisurely trip on the parkway.  Put this on the list for when we're retired and can spend as many days as we like doing things.

Maligne Lake and Canyon

Started the day with breakfast at the hotel and then we headed out to hike Maligne Canyon.  We also had tickets on a cruise out to Spirit Island in Maligne Lake.  AllTrails describes this as an in and out hike from bridge 5 to the top that takes an average of 1 hour 15 minutes.  So we should have had plenty of time to get to out 2:45 cruise, even with about a 45 minute drive, since we were starting around 12.  However, that turns out to be the average to go ONE way, not both as it seemed.  We realized this on the way up and turned around at bridge 2.  I spent a good part of this hike on hold with Pursuit who was running the cruise, and no one ever picked up the phone.  I was on hold for 30 minutes.  So basically I was trying to enjoy the hike, which was really nice, while feeling let down by both AllTrails and Pursuit.  Was doing my best to not get aggravated.

We ended up rushing to the lake only to miss our cruise.  We were a bit delayed on the way because there was a big elk on the side of the road,  One of the better reasons to miss a boat, I think.  Determined to not let it get to us, we just booked a spot on the 4:15 cruise and got something to eat in the cafeteria.  As it turns out it was no big deal, the later cruise was pretty nice and according to the guide and captain the views were better as some of the wildfire smoke had cleared.  It's a casual cruise, guide had some good info and it was interesting to see spirit island.  You can't actually go on the island as it is sacred to the local tribes.

After the cruise we headed back to Maligne Canyon, driving to the top and walking the part of the hike we didn't complete earlier  Glad we did, as the most spectacular falls are there above bridge 2 and bridge 1.

We then stopped at Medicine Lake for another spectacular view and walked down to the water.  A bonus was seeing a Hoary Marmot right there by the parking lot.  Let me walk within about 15 feet for a pic.  Dude just didn't care.  Of course this is the point where my camera really was broken from when I dropped it on the Maligne Canyon hike.  So, no Marmot picture here.

We then headed into Jasper for dinner.  We ate on the balcony at Earl's Kitchen.  Nice meal with fantastic view of the mountains, crazy how late the sun is out here.  All in all, a great day, despite the time crunch at the start.

First day in Jasper

It was pretty rainy most of the day. We spent some time walking around the West Edmonton mall, which is kind of like the Mall of America, with a skating rink, water park and other fun stuff.  But it turns out it's still a mall, and mall-itis set in fairly quickly for me.  Got to the Overlander Lodge and moved everything into our room.  The rain let up as we moved our stuff into our room so we decided to go check out the park a little bit.  The Overlander is about 5 minutes outside of Jasper National Park and we were able to quickly drive to Patricia Lake and on to Pyramid Lake which is right next-door. We did a little walk around Pyramid island and looked at Pyramid mountain and the other mountains that circle the lakes. 

We then went to dinner at the Whistlestop pub in town. We just got some nachos and a burger and the food wasn't great but it filled us up.   We then looked around in a couple of gift shops.  As we left town, we noticed a herd of elk grazing right by the road, so we stopped and took a couple pictures. We also stopped further down the road, because there was a really cool view of the mountains and the river in the sunset. We also spotted an interesting contrast in the color of the water right in the middle of the river.  I guess this results from the water coming down from the glacier and mixing in with the current.  Further down the road, I think I saw a bear run across in front of the car ahead of us. But to be honest, I'm not really sure. It was a quick black shape running across the road and disappearing in the woods. So that's our first possible bear sighting.

Edmonton and Elk Island National Park

On the way to Edmonton we stopped at Elk Island National Park. This is a nice little park with elk and Bison herds. We did a nice bike ride around one of the loop trails. The beavers have been very busy here, lots of dams and chewed trees.  Didn't see much wildlife but it was a nice ride anyway. We did see one bison while driving out of the park, but that was it. 

We then went to dinner at an Indian place, called Zaika. The food was pretty good and service was excellent. Not much else to say, an easy day, and tomorrow we get to Jasper.

Bismarck to Saskatoon

Add Saskatchewan to states/provinces I've visited. 

One thing we learned during our drive is they grow Canola all over the place here. Pretty cool golden color covering the entire landscape for some stretches. We went through the easiest border crossing I've ever seen, we were the only car going through. It seemed like the border agent just wanted to chat, she just kept asking us questions that seemed to have less and less to do with national security. After our friendly chat I immediately went the wrong way and ended up in the driveway to someone's storage building. We did figure this out quickly and got back on the right road to Saskatoon. 

 There was a lot of smoke from wildfires that were west of us. The whole drive had a campfire smell to it. This did not mix well with Deb's asthma, her chest felt tight after just walking into and out of a gas station. We had an emergency potty break at a rather sad convenience store/cafe/bar along the way. The whole place smelled "not good". I bought some Chips Ahoys anyway. A man's gotta live, after all. Got to the hotel (StayBridge Suites) around 6:30. Pretty nice, new hotel. We had looked up some places to eat and decided to try Leopold's tavern because their poutine looked good. A wedding party was there, they left right after we got there, interesting group. Deb got a Buffalo Chicken Ranch Poutine and I got a "Perogy" one. Both were good. We also ordered a club sandwich but between the 2 of us we could only eat half of it. All the junk food during the drive curbed our appetites.

Drive to Bismarck

First time for me being in North Dakota, add another state to my list, yeah! We stopped in Jamestown, ND and ate at The Buffalo Grill. Another "Linner". Nice place, but both our flatbreads were not that good, didn't seem cooked enough. I decided I need to stop getting pizza-type food away from Chicago. One other thing about the place is, while it was also empty, I was the only man in there until an old guy came in and sat at the bar. Otherwise it was mostly rather tough looking women, which made us wonder if we were in a lesbian restaurant. As we were leaving we saw a lot more women with motorcycles, the we saw a "Welcome to the North Dakota Ladies Run". Ohhh, mystery solved. 

While in Jamestown we also saw the world's largest buffalo, which is actually a sculpture. Kind of neat to see and a pretty decent view from where it was, actually. When we got into Bismarck, we weren't very hungry and it was still pretty nice out. So we decided to do a bike ride, the ride didn't seem that bad when we were looking at it on the map and it's all along a golf course so I thought it would be a nice ride. It turns out it was actually pretty hilly so we didn't actually do too long of a ride but were feeling pretty tired afterward.  We ate "dinner" at Charra and Tequila, which was really good, except we were still not that hungry, so just had a margarita flight (house, reposado-which had a lot of different ingredients but tasted pretty much just like Tequila, mango, and strawberry), guac and nachos y tequila, which was nachos covered in cheese, onions, peppers and steak. All very good, would like to have a full meal there sometime. Stayed at a Fairfield Inn. Not the best place, but it did the job.