International beauty contest

Day 21
Monday, July 5, 2010
Sightseeing in Banff National Park

It was golly-darn cold last night. We know we keep saying it was cold, but it was REALLY cold. Not as cold as Teton, but it was humid from yesterday’s rain, which sent a damp chill straight to the bones. IT’S JULY! How do these people take this?

Frank jumped out of bed long enough to light the propane stove and then dove back under the covers. Within an hour, the interior temp was up to about 50 degrees and much more tolerable. Frank cooked a hot breakfast and lured the others out of their bunks with it. Warm food is a Godsend on a cold summer’s morning.

Once we ventured outside and were reminded that people slept on the ground in tents last night we felt a little wimpy. What’s wrong with those people? They must be part Inuit.

We drove a short distance to the Lake Louise parking lot, walked up a short driveway through a conifer grove and had our breath taken away by beauty embodied. Sessy said it’s the most beautiful lake she’s ever seen. Emily agreed. Frank benefited by seeing Sylvan Lake in Custer State Park and Jenny Lake in Grand Teton two weeks ago, and with their beauty freshly in mind, he agreed. Louise is the bomb. To be fair to Jenny, she is a much different creature with her own attributes aplenty, but Louise wins the beauty contest!

Louise was approximately 3 miles long by 1 mile wide, although the distances were deceptive and she didn’t look that big. It was an intimate three square miles! On the shore near where we parked sat the 9-story Fairmont Château Lake Louise lodge/hotel. Opposite the lodge, at the other end of the lake was a mountain pass that stood about 4,000 feet high and sported a glacier on top. To the left was a stone ridge the base of which was covered with pines that came right to the water’s edge. To the right was another treed ridge that was just as high, but not as steep. The water was that beautiful “rock flour” blue-green. The combination of water, trees, rock, ice, misty clouds and flowers was intoxicating. ANYONE can take a great photo there.

We next drove a short distance to Lake Moraine. It is probably not coincidental that two of the most beautiful lakes on earth are a 15 minute drive apart. Moraine’s color was a more intense blue. Her surroundings were very similar to Louise’s but the mountains were perhaps not quite as spectacular. Nonetheless, Elliot said that Moraine, in his opinion, was the prettiest. Frank conceded that Moraine was a close second.

After noon, we drove forty miles down the Bow River Valley to the town of Banff where we ate bison burgers for lunch at the Maple Leaf Grill at the corner of Banff Aveune and Caribou Street. After lunch, Emily and Sessy went souvenir shopping and Frank and Elliot went to a cyber café to blog and surf the web.

We were somewhat surprised to learn that Banff was named after a region in Scotland called Banffshire where one of the major financiers of the railroad that helped settle this region of Alberta originally came from.

Banff reminded us of other western tourist towns including Jackson, WY, Boulder, CO, Santa Fe, NM, and Durango, CO.

After shopping for groceries, we drove back to Lake Louise Campground, cooked a stir-fry dinner, and enjoyed a campfire as Emily and Elliot perfected their hackeysack techniques in an open space under the pine canopy.

Our campground was divided into sections for soft-sided versus hard-sided camping equipment. The soft-sided section, where we were, was encircled by a five foot tall electric fence designed to keep campers safe from bears. This is serious bear country!

Tomorrow: Glacier Nat’l Park, MT.