The Foreign Lands of Canada

"Oh yeah, I forgot! I promise I'll do that.."
            -Me, the last 732 times Brannan reminded me that I was supposed to contribute to the blog about our trip to Banff.

Whoops!


Now that it's a month and a half later, let's see if I can even remember what happened up there in the great white north.

...After reluctantly leaving our "glamping" spot outside Glacier, the next morning we drove up to Alberta, Canada.

Oooooh Canadaaaaa

Now, you would think that the drive between Glacier and Banff would be absolutely beeeeautiful and mountainous (like Glacier and Banff are...) but you would be wrong.  It is eastern Montana, which essentially equals Wyoming. BLECH! 6 hours of driving through that nonsense.

And out in the middle of the bleak wilderness, the only sign of civilization for hours... the Canadian border post.

The first town on the other side of the border is Cardston, Alberta. We knew they had a temple there, so we had decided beforehand that we would stop and attend a session on our way through.

This temple is one of the earlier ones, so it was all old wood carvings inside and really small with lots of levels. Also, inside the front doors used to be the outside, so when you walk in, there is a huge fountain and pool there in the foyer! Pretty neat.

After that, we headed a few more hours on towards Banff and found a place to stay. The first order of business was to find some food. I found a highly recommended place that served Poutine in all it's varieties. Now, us Yankees do not have any such creation here in the states, but it is a whole bunch of french fries covered in cheese curds and then smothered with brown gravy. Gross, but delicious! This is the classic version, but there were at least 20 other choices of things you could put on it. Oh, those crazy Canucks eh?

Brannan with his Poutine and Smoked Meat sandwich

The best part about the meal turned out to be the local Canadians being all Canadian-y. Our waiter accidentally knocked my water over all over the table and kept saying "Ohhh I'm so sowrry, eh." He apologized like 10 times as if we were completely offended. We were just trying not to laugh at his awesome accent. There was also a group of teenagers talking about their cars and everyday teenager things with those crazy accents. It sounds like Minnesotans, but more like when you're making fun of Minnesotans and you really exaggerate it. (You know you've done it)

It was weird how Canada felt like a foreign country, even though it barely is. You still had to deal with weird money and accents and road signs. And our phones didn't work! 5 miles from the border they went out of service, and 5 miles inside on the way back, they started beeping on again. We joked that if we ever needed to get the travel bug out of our system again, we'd just come up to Canada because it's juuust foreign enough to give you that little taste.

Anyway, we stayed right outside of Banff National Park and spent 2 days driving all through it.  We decided that Banff was WAY more glaciery than Glacier. Some false advertisement going on there.

Town of Banff

 It was mostly glaciers and mountain lakes and waterfalls and hiking - perfect! The lakes were all glacier fed, so they had an opaque color to them. Get ready for picture overload.

This was the first hike we did. Easy, and on a paved walkway through a narrow canyon to a waterfall.

Then we stopped at lakes along the way

Beautiful glacier above the lake

I'm pretty sure he yelled "Feet are overrated!" as he plunged into the frigid water.

The wind did that to the mountain. Cool, eh?

The next day we stopped at the tourist stops. There is a huge lodge up on a lake in Banff that only costs $4,000 per night to stay in. What a deal! However, we skipped it and just hiked up behind the lake for a sweet view of the lodge.

At the top! And I got to read a riveting plaque about the history of the lodge.

Wowza!

No, that's not a plane in the sky. It's a red canoe in the lake below!

Back at the bottom. The view from the lodge

Everything was so spectacular! The huge cliffs and blue lakes were just so beautiful.

The last one we saw was the poster child lake for Banff - Lake Moraine. It's usually more glaciery, but since it was later in the summer, the glacier was dirty and not very awesome. Still, the lake was gorgeous, of course. But if you wanted a good view, you had to work for it!

Yes, there was a trail around this, but all the crazy people  adventurous folks took to the log jam to get a better view.

Whew! Made it! Now to scramble over all those rocks to the other side...

Nice view! And all bones are intact.

And there you have it! We spent some time wandering around the town of Banff, which was very Jackson Hole/Sun Valley ish. Eating good food and enjoying those beautiful mountains. What a great vacation!

Oh, and I almost forgot the mountain sheep that was as big as our car.

That's it for now, until our next adventure!