Banff National Park

Now that we're going to Canada every year, My wife's sisters can't always make it down from Edmonton to spend the week with us. We found a way to spend a little bit of time with one sister, at least. We met them in Banff for some camping. 

When we left to meet them, it was raining. The whole three hour and forty minute drive there, it continued to rain. It didn't bode well for an enjoyable trip, but I had hope. I've dealt with a threat of rain and still had a wonderful trip recently.

The first place we stopped at was a pullout near an extremely tall waterfall we saw. It wasn't a legitimate waterfall, like Yosemite Falls or something like that. It was really more of a stream flowing down a very steep hillside, instead of plunging off a great big cliff, but it came down for what seemed like a mile. So, we wanted to get a better look at it.

We were there way ahead of my wife's sister's family, so we had time to kill. Since it was raining so much, we thought we ought to pull in and look at the Banff town. That was a big mistake, because it immediately soured my mood. It was already raining, and looking to be a really miserable trip; now we added streets as crowded as the middle of any big city in the world; throngs of people walking, biking, and driving everywhere; and hotels upon hotels everywhere. I felt like I was visiting Times Square instead of a town in the middle of the remote Canadian Rockies.

I was expecting the Banff town site to be similar to the town site that we'd experienced when we visited Waterton National Park in years past. My wife informed me that I was being naive. Banff is supposedly Canada's largest and most popular national park, and the town needed to be much larger to support that.

Personally I found it disgusting. National parks, in my experience, are places that are supposed to be protected from this type of hyper-development. It's the whole point of the designation. Outside the parks, there's lots of hotels and motels to support the traffic that come to visit, but within, there's almost no development at all. Development inside a national park is a trail or a visitor center or a campground, something that gets you closer to nature, not something that seals you away from it. There's possibly a few hotels that were built in the 1930's, but since then, conservation has taken over, and kept that influence out.

I know, it makes me sound like some kind of tree-hugging snob, but I am what I am. I hated it. And every time that I found another sign of it throughout our entire stay in Banff, I seethed a little more. I complained about it so much that I could see my wife starting to get defensive. I think complaining about a Canadian National Park, a place that she loved from her childhood, was coming across to her as the same as calling her names. I had to bite my tongue and shut up.

We didn't wind up stopping anywhere or looking at anything in the Banff town. It was so busy I couldn't find a parking spot, so I just turned around and headed back out.

Instead, we headed toward our campground. To get there, we had to take the Bow Valley Parkway...sorry, I should say the Scenic Bow Valley Parkway. I mean the road has its own special entryway sign thing...which I did not get a picture of to show you. Anyway, we headed down this road toward Johnston Canyon Campground where we would be staying.

As soon as we got on the road, we noticed the flowers that covered the shoulder of the road here and there. They were amazingly thick and heavy. It was so pretty that I immediately began looking for a place to pull off and photograph them. Soon we came upon one, and I got out and took some pictures.

Amazing, right? They were like this everywhere, and I love taking pictures of wildflowers, so I couldn't resist.

 The pullout also had a nice view of the Bow River.

At this point, the rain had let up a lot. It was only a drizzle now.

The river was this amazing color of blue-green, and the clouds clinging to the mountains helped make a perfectly picturesque location. Look at this amazing panorama photo. Be sure to click on the picture to see the full size shot, it's worth it.

I saw someone else at the pullout taking pictures with the longest, most massive lens I'd probably ever seen personally. I commented on her lens, and she told me she was taking pictures of the bald eagle on the mountainside with it. She pointed it out to me, and I smiled. Sure enough, there was a bald eagle right there.

Sadly, we'd broken the zoom lens on our camera on the way up. It was in the basket with my clothes, sitting on top of everything in our trunk. When I needed to take my diabetes medications with the breakfast we bought for ourselves at McDonalds, I used the automatic opener button on the console. The door opened automatically with no one around to see if maybe something might be sitting on the top in a precarious position. So, without the door to keep it in place, the basket fell out onto the asphalt. Bang went the camera off the pavement, and zap went its capability to zoom. It still took pictures, but it will never zoom in on say, a bald eagle on a mountainside again.

This is the picture I was able to get with my phone of the eagle. To make sure you could see it, I circled it for you. I probably didn't need to, but just in case...

With the rain letting up, the crowds left in the town behind us, and the scenery and wildlife in front of us, I couldn't help but change my mood.

The sour feelings melted away, and we proceeded on from there to our campsite in good spirits. By now, my wife's sister and her family had passed us, and were waiting for us there.

As we set up camp, we caught our first glimpse of blue sky of the day. We almost broke into song and dance we were so happy. We put our heads together, and decided that the first place we should drive out to see is Lake Louise.

What a gorgeous place. It's another one of the dozens of bodies of water in Banff that are a strange color of blue. Where the Bow River was that weird blue-green color, Lake Louise was a lovely milky blue color.

We checked online, and found out that the reason all the bodies of water have such unusual coloring is because they are fed by melting glaciers. Glaciers gather up minerals and stuff from the lands that they are on. That stuff is called glacial flour. Then those minerals go out along with the water, and leave the lakes with interesting colors.

We got some nice pictures of Lake Louise, but notice that they're all facing the same way. If you turned your camera in any other direction, you got a photo like this:

Times Square in the Rockies. It was crammed to the brim with people. Some of that might have to do with the massive hotel that is built right on the lakeside.

I've been told that it is a beautiful hotel, luxurious and brilliant. But it makes me sick, just like the town of Banff did...but worse I guess. Couldn't they have built it far enough away from the lake that people could have enjoyed the scenery without that hulking eyesore shouldering its way into all your pictures and vistas? I guess, if they'd done that, the fatcats that stay there wouldn't get a lake view out the window of their hotel room, and they'd complain. And we wouldn't want that. Yuck!

Here's a nice picture of the lake to cleanse the palate before we move on.

After Lake Louise, we made a decision as a group that would make a big difference for the rest of our trip. We were going to get up as early as we could in the morning to see the places that were most likely to be crowded. Some of the people in our group were against the idea, but eventually, we all agreed that the next morning we would get up and go to Moraine Lake before even eating breakfast. We could do that when we got back. We figured it was our best chance to have some good experiences instead of some claustrophobic ones.

On the way back to the campsite, we came across five great big elk eating grass on the shoulder of the Scenic Bow Valley Parkway. Here's my amazing non-zoomed picture of them.

The picture obviously doesn't speak much for the majesty of these creatures, but they were really impressive. If wildlife counts as scenery, then this parkway was definitely living up to its name as a scenic parkway.

We drove past one pullout just as the train was coming down the tracks. My wife remarked about how great a picture it would make, but we had passed the spot we could stop, so we didn't get it. We were bummed enough that we insisted on stopping and getting a picture at the next spot on the road, a nice bend in the river.

Back at the campsite, we built a fire and cooked some hot dogs, and sat around the fire, enjoying each other's company. We would have done s'mores as well, but because of the lateness of our arrival back at camp, my wife's sister's little ones were already in bed.

We went to bed, and overnight, the rain returned.

We'd learned while camping at the Black Canyon in Colorado how important it was to use the ropes attached to the rain fly to keep it off of the tent. We were pretty successful, and most of us stayed dry all night.

 It was super early, but we shook off the sleep, and got on the road to Moraine Lake. Along the way, we encountered a bear on the roadside.

It was frustrating, because the people in a car ahead of us had decided that they would hog the bear all to themselves. They drove slowly alongside the bear, shadowing its every move while those of us behind them only got to see the bear's hairy ass. Eventually, the bear got annoyed, and charged at the car. This finally got the car moving, and we were able to get a better look at the bear.

 We took a couple of pictures of it and moved on.

I didn't notice it, but my wife told me that the car that had been blocking our path and was then chased away by the bear only drove forward a few feet and then pulled a U-turn and circled back to stalk the bear from the other side of the road. I think those folks might have been overdoing it a bit.

We got to Moraine Lake, and this early in the day, it was relatively empty.

It was absolutely beautiful. The lake is well-known as a beautiful place, and like everywhere else in the park, it had a big lodge built next to it for people to stay at. Luckily, they were all sleeping still, and most of the rest of the crowd hadn't arrived yet.

The lake is really reflective from certain angles.

But also, it has the most interesting color of any of the bodies of water we saw while we were there. This stuff looked like that blue Powerade:

Mountain Berry Blast lake water. Mmmm...

We were all so blown away by the beauty and color of the lake that we just kept taking pictures.

We took so many pictures that I'm frankly a bit embarrassed.

Back in 2002 or so, I started scanning the slides that my dad had accumulated over his lifetime. He had boxes and boxes of them, and by chance, I started scanning with the boxes from the family vacation we took in 1978. That year was the year we took a trip through the canyons of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. It was my first experience with scanning slides, and it was a rather time consuming process, but I was excited to see these pictures from my youth.

However, I scanned slide after slide without people in them. It frustrated me a lot, because it wasn't easy. Each slide took me a few minutes to scan. So, when I made it to the 41st photo of the Grand Canyon without any people in it, I had to call my dad up and gripe at him.

I shouldn't complain, I mean, it's the Grand Canyon. If that's not a place you should take a lot of pictures of, then what is? But I was pretty annoyed all the same.

However, here on Moraine Lake, we took 58 pictures of the scenery without a person in the frame. When we got home and I counted them up, I had to hang my head in shame. I made a pledge to try harder to make sure to include people in the frame of at least most of the pictures I take.

In our defense, we had four cameras involved in taking all these pictures. So maybe our actual problem is just that we have too many cameras, and we need to take them away from someone so that isn't an issue in the future. But then again, why would we? These pictures are digital. They take up no physical space. They don't cost anything or need to be developed. So, when it comes down to it, we can take as many as we want, and not worry at all. No one will have to sit at a computer to scan them in the future, so we should probably snap away all we want. But still, we should get more people in the frame all the same.

Here's a picture with me in it, just so I can forget my shame before I flood you with more personless pictures.

There was a path that led around the lake, and we all walked it, gazing at the beauty of the view, and taking pictures, lots of them. We eventually made it to a point where a waterfall...or what we thought was going to be a waterfall...emptied into the lake. It wasn't really a waterfall, more like a creek or a river. It was really interesting, though. It flowed right through the trees and rocks. I don't know if that means that it's a new creek that wasn't there last year or what, but it was really neat.

Once we made it here, we'd walked our fill. We turned around and headed back to the car. At this point, it was getting lighter, and later in the day. The path on the way back was more crowded, but it was nothing like what the parking lot would be like. It turned out that our strategy of heading out to see things before breakfast was absolutely crucial. By the time we were trying to leave the parking lot, we could barely manage to walk through the crowds of tour buses and cars. The parking lot was a zoo. Luckily, we didn't have to deal with it. We already had a parking spot, and we were going to bequeath it to some frustrated traveler who was desperate for one.

On the way back to our campsite for breakfast, we came across a traffic jam. For once it wasn't because of overcrowding. It was just because a couple of grizzly bears decided to come down and hang out on the hill next to the road.

Sadly, as I mentioned, our good camera with the zoom lens was kaput, so this is the best we got of these bears.

After seeing the bears, we drove past the spot I mentioned earlier, and the train happened to be coming again. This time, I managed to stop just before it was too late, so we could get this picture.

Cool, right?

Yeah, I know, it's just another picture with no people in it. I swear I'll be better.

After breakfast, we decided we would go into Banff, and see the Cave and Basin. The guide books really talked up the Cave and Basin. The Cave and Basin is actually it's own separate historical site independent of Banff National Park. It is supposedly the birthplace of Canada's national park system. Once they discovered the hot springs, they were able to lure people out to visit, and soon enough, they had a national park and so on and so on.

The Cave and Basin was pretty weak, however. Probably because it was too overdeveloped. They built a huge visitor center all around it, and the cave is now just another room in the visitor center. A room that smells really badly of sulfur. Just a hole in the roof letting light in to shine on the spring fed pool in the cave.

You can't even touch the water to feel the warmth or whatever. There's some kind of creature, which I can't remember what it was...a crab or a clam or something...that is endangered, and if you touch it, the creatures will die. So, it's look only, don't touch.

The kids have done Junior Ranger programs at all the national parks that we've visited. Canada has their own version of the program called the Junior Xplorers. The Cave and Basin, being its own separate historical site, actually had its own Junior Xplorers program, and we sat around for a good thirty minutes at least while each of the kids filled out their booklets so that they could get their Xploreres souvenirs.

When we finally were presented with those souvenirs, however, we were pretty underwhelmed. Because the kids were under six years old, they got a "special" membership into the little kids club, and their prize was a membership card! Isn't that what every kid wants is a membership card? Yay! Not that the regular prize is all that more amazing. My younger daughter was old enough to qualify for that. It's a plastic dog tag that says Cave and Basin on it. But still, the dog tag is something that could go together with the Junior Ranger badges they've been earning at American national parks for the last two years. Even my wife's sister, a true blue Canadian and one of the easiest going people I know was miffed at spending all that time for something so worthless.

Well, we were done with the Cave and Basin. My wife's sister and her family went back to the campsite, while us Ankleviches decided to stay in town long enough to find some souvenirs. We got lucky to find a parking spot, and hit the streets. They were so busy.

All I wanted was a patch to go with my national parks collection. It was harder to find than I expected. Most of the patches were just Canadian flags with Banff under it. Not quite what I was looking for, but at last I found this one, and it was worth the wait.

 In fact, they had three different amazing patches to pick from. In the end, I picked this one because we'd actually seen bears, whereas we hadn't seen the wolves or bighorn sheep that adorned the other awesome patches.

We decided not to try to see any other sights, but instead spend the evening with my wife's sister and her family. We had dinner, then got a fire going to make the obligatory s'mores, because kids just feel cheated or something if they go camping without roasting at least one marshmallow.

Afterwards, we attended the ranger program. It was about efforts to repopulate Banff National Park with bison. It was very interactive. All of us had some part to play in the program. My wife, her sister, and her sister's husband got called up on stage to play a quiz game called "Bison, Bison, Bison." Although, I discovered that Canadians pronounce the word differently than Americans. They pronounce the S like a Z. It comes out bizon. Almost twenty years in to marriage with my wife, and there's still new things to be discovered about her homeland's quirks and peculiarities.

After the ranger program, we built up the fire again, and spent the evening in front of it, enjoying each other's company. For my wife and her sister, that's really all they wanted to do was spend time with each other. They could have been just as happy camping in the backyard as they were camping in one of the most beautiful locations on earth as long as they could spend time with each other. I think I might have irked them a few times on the trip by trying to get them to go and see more stuff, because I really wanted to see the sights.

After a while, we hit the sack. We were hoping to get up early in the morning, pack up, and hike Johnston Canyon before the crowds arrived like we did at Moraine Lake.

When morning came, the kids didn't seem interested in waking up. I let them snooze away, until we could wait no longer. We needed to get packed up or else. The skies were dark and the rain was threatening. We rousted the kids, got them dressed, packed everything up and threw it in the car, and just as we had the tent flattened and ready to roll up, the skies opened up, and the all the rain that the heavens had been saving up for the whole trip came down on us at once. We scrambled to pull the exposed tent to a pavilion to keep it dry, and then hid under the tarp that my wife's sister had spread above the picnic table. She was in the middle of cooking breakfast. Even though she was pretty exposed at the edge of the tarp, she bravely soldiered on, making pancakes for us all.

After we all ate, we went back under the pavilion to roll the tent up and store the wet mess in the back of the van. At this point, we were leaning toward skipping our planned hike in Johnston Canyon. I mean, who wants to hike for several miles...er, kilometers in the rain, right? But, just as it seemed hopeless, the rain abated. We were able to get my wife's sister's stuff packed away, and say goodbye to our campsites. The skies had cleared, so, we decided to give the hike a shot. If it rained, we could always turn around and come back. Besides, we had ponchos. We'd be fine.

The parking lot was nearly empty. It wasn't technically early anymore, like we had planned, but the heavy rain had chased everyone away anyhow. So, we hit the trail.

It was a very interesting hike. Half of the trail was nothing more than catwalks attached to the cliff face above the river.

It wasn't long before we made it to the lower falls. At the lower falls, you go across a bridge that takes you to a point just on the other side of a big cliff face from the waterfall. There is a tunnel drilled through the mountain that you can pass through to get a nice, super close up view of the waterfall.

I didn't get a picture of it, but I found this one online that shows you what I'm talking about.

There wasn't a lot of room at the viewpoint, though, so we waited in line on the other side of the tunnel until it was our turn.

You are so close to the waterfall that the noise is deafening, and you probably ought to be wearing your poncho, because if you're not, you'll get fairly wet. Little really didn't like being that close to the loud, powerful, and dangerous cascade.

The knuckleheads that came to the viewpoint behind us didn't understand the constraints on space presented in the viewpoint and tunnel. So, instead of waiting outside the tunnel, they crowded their way into the tunnel. This made exiting the viewpoint very difficult and irritating.

I was so angry with the people who pushed their way into the tunnel, I wanted to cuss them out like crazy. But I'm not like that. Instead, I just made passive-aggressive snide remarks on my way through the tunnel. I was sure glad to get out of there though. Blech, do I hate crowds.

After the cave fun, we were supposed to part ways with my wife's sister. Her kids are little, and little guys can only hike so far before they want to quit. If you don't quit, then they'll make your life miserable for it. She was well aware of this phenomenon, so had decided to quit at Lower Falls before we even set out on the hike. Except, the hike to lower falls had been easy enough that they figured the kids could handle going the rest of the way. I was excited. I wanted to see as much as I could. So, on we hiked.

More catwalks and more falls. I kept thinking that we must have made it to the upper falls, but no, they were just little cascades that didn't count as falls at all (although in some lesser park they probably would).

 These two were really cool.

Then finally, as the little ones were deciding that they'd had about enough of this hiking stuff, we made it to the upper fall.

They were really pretty. They reminded me of videos of waterfalls that I've seen in Hawaii or someplace tropical like that.

I suppose it's because the falls are high enough, and surrounded by cliffs so that you don't see all the very non-tropical trees that the illusion works.

The falls were definitely worth the hike, although they had an even smaller viewing platform to see them from. It was probably big enough to fit only three people on it, and you couldn't see the falls until you were all the way to the end of it, because the cliffs blocked your view until then. So, each person was only allowed a few seconds to look before they started feeling the pressure to move along. And this was when the trail was much less crowded than usual because the rain had chased everyone away. I can't imagine what it would be like on a normal day. Yikes.

We hiked our way back, and the little guys hated it. They had to be carried a lot of the way, which just isn't easy anymore. They've all gotten big enough that they're beyond that now. The trail was getting more crowded too. The catwalks weren't really made wide enough for people to pass each other, and all of us got frustrated with having to press ourselves against the wall to let people pass. Eventually, we made it back to the parking lot, where we said goodbye. It's always tearful for my wife, but at least we know we'll back to camp with them again next year.

On our way out, we stopped at the viewpoint to the Vermillion Lakes. There's a road you could take that drives along beside them, but by now we were all ready to just go home.

We looked at the lakes from the viewpoint, and then went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We spent time at home with Grandma and Grandpa, and went down the hill to visit with Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa.The eventually we came back to our own house, and started looking forward to next year's trip. I'm going to insist that we camp at Jasper National Park this time. I love this plan.