Road Trip to Banff, Alberta, Canada

This month was our 42nd Wedding Anniversary......time sure flies.  It's hard to believe that we are getting that old.  Our son Michael and his wife Emmy gave us a week's stay in their timeshare condo for Christmas, and we chose to use it for our Anniversary.  We haven't been to Banff, Alberta for at least 38 years, so it was high time that we make a return trip.  This blog will be mostly pictures, because that was the purpose of our trip......to take as many photos as we could.......and hope that some of them turned out good!

We loaded up our truck.....with everything except the kitchen sink, and started our trip over Highway 20, the North Cascades Highway.

Our first stop was at the Diablo Lake lookout, which overlooks Lake Diablo.  The mountain behind me is called Colonial Peak.

Lunch at the Diablo Lake Lookout.

Washington Pass is the highest point that Highway 20 goes over.  The mountains there are rugged and beautiful, and there was still quite a bit of snow on the ground.

 

We decided to drive up the Okanogan River Valley....up through Penticton and Kelowna.  It's been so long since we've been there, that things looked totally different.  The speed limit in Canada is a lot slower than in the United States, so the going was pretty slow.  Plus, the roads were more winding and there were a lot of just two lane roads.  We ended up in Salmon Arm, British Columbia and spent the night there.

Lunch just outside of Penticton, British Columbia.

After we left Salmon Arm, we drove through Revelstoke....and crossed the Columbia River.  Even way up that far north in Canada, the Columbia is a big river.

Ron, on a bridge over the Columbia, in Revelstoke, BC.

 

I've always thought that mountains in the state of Washington were beautiful (and I still do!), but the Canadian Rockies are in a class all of their own.  They are huge!  And that is an understatement.  The photo below is between Revelstoke and the upper Glacier National Park.  (not the one in Montana.)

 

 

I remember driving through Yoho National Park as a kid, but don't remember anything about it.  We stopped at the National Park Visitor's Center in Field, BC, and talked to the Park Rangers about things to see in Yoho.  I'm so glad that we did!  It was one of my favorite places that we stopped!  We drove over to Emerald Lake.....very aptly named.  The color of the water in Yoho was breathtaking.  Below:  Ron standing on a bridge on Emerald Lake, with Mt. Stephen in the background.  They have nice cabins and a conference center there, and also canoes for rent.

 

 



Next we visited a place called "Natural Bridge" on the Kicking Horse River.  The bridge was made of stone.....which was originally all underwater and made a waterfall in the river.  However, over time, the water eroded the stone away and created a large hole for the water to go through.  Eventually more stone will erode and it will be a large chasm there instead of a stone bridge that you can almost walk over.

The photo below is looking up river at the bridge, where the water rushed through.

 

I took this shot of Ron getting close to the where the water falls through the hole in the rock.

 

 

This is one of the shots that Ron got.

 



Here is a panoramic that I took of the river here.  I just couldn't get enough of this place.  In fact, we visited here twice.

Our hotel was called the Banff Rocky Mountain Resort, and was located just on the outskirts of town. That was nice, so it wasn't noisy with a lot of people all the time.  Instead, we had elk walking through our parking lot!    The mountain behind the Resort is called Mt. Rundle.  The town is literally at the foot of the mountain. 

We stayed in an upstairs condo, and had a view of Mt. Rundle out our living room window.  Poor us....LOL!  The photo below shows Ron coming down the stairs from our unit.  The mountain in the background is called Cascade Mountain.

Banff is a town that reminds me of Park City, Utah, or Leavenworth, Washington.  All the buildings are a similar style....very "Alps" looking.  There are a million different shops and restaurants.

 

The streetlights are very European.....they have diagonal lights for the pedestrians as well as the normal two way lights.  We noticed horse drawn carriages in town quite often as well.

 



The railroad originally built the Banff Fairmont Hot Springs Hotel.  It is quite a grand old lady.  It is set slightly above the town on a hill, and you can see if from the freeway.  It's a pretty impressive hotel, to say the least.

The town of Banff, looking toward Cascade Mountain in the east.

 



 

Just loved the local architecture of the buildings.

 



Just outside of town there is a drive along the Vermillion Lakes.  It was gorgeous!  You can rent canoes to go out on the lakes.  (Ron took these photos of Vermillion Lakes and Mt. Rundle.)

 



 

Just outside of Banff on the other side of town are a couple of lakes.  This one is called Two Jack Lake.

 



Behind the Banff Fairmont HotSprings Hotel, you can ride up a gondola and see the entire area.  It's quite a sight.  Ron was fighting a cold, and it was a bit chilly, so we decided it wouldn't be a good idea to ride up.  We could see quite a bit from the parking lot, as it was.

 



Right below the Fairmont Springs Hotel is Bow Falls on the Bow River.  Everywhere you go, you will find waterfalls and lakes.  However, it's still pretty early in the season, so many of the lakes were still frozen over.

 



Looking downstream from Bow Falls.



Another interesting place to visit is called Cave and Basin.  We didn't hike up to it, but it is a cave with a basin of hot springs.   There used to be a swimming pool here, but they have since closed it down.

 



Just a few miles away from Banff, to the north, is Lake Louise.  I remember going here as a kid.  The lake was still frozen over, but there were still bus loads of people arriving.  The actual tourist season started about a week later, but it was already starting to get really busy.

 

No matter which direction you looked, the mountains were the main attraction.  They rose straight from the valley floor.....no foothills at all.  One of our favorite drives was up the Bow Valley Parkway.  Every mountain was more beautiful than the last one.

This is Castle Mountain as shot through the windshield of the truck, on the freeway.  It looks like a fortress.

 



 

Here is a panoramic that I took of Castle Mountain, from along the west side.

 

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One morning we got up a the crack of dawn and drove down the Bow Valley Parkway.  Ron got this great shot of Pilot Mountain.  You can't miss this peak, so I'm sure that's why it is named Pilot Mountain.

 

Another day we drove up the Icefield Parkway into Jasper National Park.  We stopped at Waterfowl Lakes, which was one of the few lakes that wasn't frozen.  I took this shot of Ron as he was getting his camera set up.



 

I was wandering around the edge of the lake trying to find the right spot to take a picture, when I stepped on what I thought were wet rocks.  Well, they were wet and they were rocks, but they weren't solid.  It was soft mud, so I sank up to my ankles.  So even when I was ankle deep in mud, I decided I wasn't leaving without a picture.  So I got this one.

 



 

 

We drove all the way up to the Columbia Icefields.  It is a huge glacier....actually three glaciers.  This is where the Columbia River starts from.  It starts on the glacier on the backside of the one in the photo.  It's on Mt. Columbia which is one of the highest peaks in Canada.  This pictures just doesn't do it justice.  It's massive!

 



 

 At the top of one of mountain passes, there was a gorgeous little creek called Nigel Creek.  There was too much snow to hike down to it at this time of year, so I just has to use my telephoto lens.

 

At one point on the Icefield Parkway, you cross the Saskatchewan River, so it's called Saskatchewan Crossing.  The river goes through the valley and there are mountains on all sides.  Pretty spectacular!  We had to wait for some big horn sheep to get off the bridge over the river.

 

Ron, setting up to take a panorama of Saskatchewan Crossing.

 

 

This is a panorama of Hector Lake area, which was still frozen over.

 

 

One day we drove the 22 kilometers south to the town of Canmore.  It is home to the Canadian Cross Country Ski Team.  They have a pretty impressive Nordic Center there where athletes train and they teach classes.  The mountains around Canmore are huge and impressive.  (If you've seen the movie "Santa Baby", they filmed that movie here.)

 

Crossing the Bow River, which runs right through the town of Canmore.  The mountains are called the Three Sisters.

 

On our drive home, we decided to drive south through the Kootenay National Park, which is in British Columbia.  We followed the Kootenay River for quite a while.  The color of the water is turquoise and gorgeous!

 

 You could see where there had been a huge forest fire, but it was still absolutely stunning.

 

 

 

 We found a nice spot to pull over and fix lunch along the Kootenay River.

 

 

 

As we crossed the US-Canadian Border into Idaho, you could really see the boundary line quite clearly.  There were stone markers and then all the trees has been cut along the border line, so there was no mistakes as to where the border was.  Pretty cool.

 

 

 

We drove through Sandpoint, Idaho, and then on to Spokane and got onto I-90 to Seattle.  It only took us one day to come home (12 hours of driving) whereas it took us 2 days going up the other route.  It didn't seem like such a long trip coming back through Kootenay National Park and down through Idaho.  We've decided that we need to go back to the Banff area in the early Fall.....all the lakes will not be frozen, and there should be beautiful fall colors.  And hopefully most of the tourists will have gone by then.  It's a trip worth taking again!  I think that we saw some of the most beautiful scenery on earth.  Just for the record:  we saw deer, lots of elk, wolf, black bear and grizzlies.