Photos
Photos in no particular order because Photobucket sucks!
September 1, 2012 - We got to sleep in today! No bags out. Breakfast was at 8am in
Tony Roma's. It was kind of a mess of a makeshift buffet. The bus departed from our view of the parking lot at 9am. This would be our first really long day all outdoors and wouldn't you know it had snowed overnight on the mountaintops and it rained off and on all morning. It was a kind of crazy weather day, all 4 seasons in one day. Good thing we had all packed and dressed in layers! Clay, of course, did not sleep in and went out for a long walk and lots of photos.
The morning drive was billed as a wildlife excursion, sadly all we got was a glimpse of 2 deer. To kill the suspense, I will say right now that in our week in Canada we never saw a living moose! According to Amy, there have been no caribou in the area we traveled for several years, the last known herd was killed by an avalanche. Sad! We did see some scenic landscapes though.
We stopped first at
Two Jack Lake and then went on to
Lake Minnewanka for a potty break. They had a build your own
inukshuk playground surrounding their modern, ecofriendly toilets.
Then, we drove back to Banff and toured the
Cascades of Time Garden and from there we saw the famous view of Banff that was on the Starbucks mug. Huh. The gardens were spectacular and it would have been really stunning had the water works been running. The weeds in the pools at the top were so tall, that I would guess the ponds had been empty all summer. Too bad.
It started really raining here and by the time we got in the bus on our way to our Bow River Float trip, it was raining sideways with a cold gusting wind. I may not have mentioned it before, but Amy had this on-going joke. I guess she thought it was a joke. Clay called it her schtick. Anyway, from the first minute of the first day, she went on and on about how lucky we were that we all got to travel with the love of her life, her man, her fiance, our bus driver Brian. She probably never went an hour without mentioning that this was a great place for a wedding, or this was a great place for engagement photos, or here for wedding photos, where they were planning to do all these things themselves. Amy told us she was 24 and had been doing guide work for 5-6 years. Brian was in his 50s. It was clear to me that he was old enough to be her father and he did not appear to be amused by it, though as the week went by, he started making jokes too. But first we learned by asking him, that he was married to someone else, had a daughter Amy's age and was in fact already a grandfather. By the end of the trip, I think everyone had figured out that it wasn't true, but in the beginning people just took her at her word. They believed it and were not amused later. It wasn't amusing to start with either. I am not sure what the point of all the effort was except that without it, she'd have had very little to say. You can never know what goes on in another's head, but my feeling was that it amused her and she didn't care how we felt because she just didn't like us very much. She was there for herself and we were just so much baggage. For example, she rarely ever answered a direct question. If anyone asked a question, the response was usually, I'll answer that later. You might have guessed, that later hardly ever came. Again, I don't know why except to think that she didn't care about us or our getting answers to our questions. Anyway, that is the reason for the pose in the photo of Brian and Amy pretending to be in love.
We went past the Fairmont Banff Springs to get to the
Float Trip loading area which was just across the river from the base of the Bow River Falls. It is probably a very scenic area! We were all just holding on to our clothes! Trying to keep the rain out of our eyes or off our glasses! So, we lined up, or clustered up, and the river guides came around and suited each of us up with a lifevest and a plastic poncho over that. We wound up at the end of the line, mostly because people bolted back to the bus as the wind and rain picked up as we were loading the rafts. We were the last ones to load the 3rd and final raft. At least an entire raft load bailed out on the float trip. Too bad.
Our river guide, Dean, a real Canadian rowed towards the falls as we launched and told us he was going upstream for a few minutes until the rain broke. True to his word, within minutes the sun was out. This created individual steam saunas with us in our wet ponchos! We mostly stripped out of ours. The rafting trip was interesting and we enjoyed it once the sun came out, which was almost the whole trip.
We were on the
HooDoo trip. We rafted past the hoodoos on the river and then unloaded back into the bus. The water was low as we could see just below the hoodoos. But, the most exciting thing was spotting a small black bear right in front of the first hoodoo. Clay just happened to have his telephoto lens on the camera at the moment I spotted it, or we'd never have gotten a photo of it. Dean thought I was joking when I first called out bear! Once we all started hollering and pointing, the little bear took off through the woods and we lost sight of him. Pretty exciting though. I had been hoping to have a non-threatening bear encounter and this was a good one. As the last raft, we were the only ones to see the bear.
The rest of the afternoon was at independent leisure. We could get a ride back to our hotel or we could be left at the
Fairmont Banff Springs to have lunch or otherwise make our own way back to the Mount Royal in Banff. According to the map, it looked like there was a riverside trail from the falls, behind the Fairmont and into Banff. We decided to try to get a drink or snack in the Fairmont with a view and then walk back. As soon as we got off the bus, I asked Amy how to find the trail behind the Fairmont and she answered directly for once, saying there is no trail, you have to walk on the road to get back. OK, nevermind, first direct answer and it is either wrong or untrue. We went into the Fairmont and toured some of the public areas looking for restrooms and a place to sit and have a break. All the seats were taken, except for some dark, interior ones and that was not what we had in mind. They were not using outdoor seating because everything was still pretty wet. It was right between noon and 1pm, so it was peak time and we just missed out. None of us were interested in sitting in a restaurant for a full meal. When we were ready to start walking back, I went to the Concierge and asked how to find the riverside trail and he told me to turn left at the palm, follow the hall and signs all the way to the spa, go outside to the restaurant down by the river and go behind the restaurant and turn left on the path. That was pretty much the way it worked. Though, we would never have gone through all the little halls and doors without his instructions. The walk started at the bottom of the falls, so there were lots and lots of stairs to start our walk back. Good thing we had protein bars and nabs again to eat on the way down!
We walked at a leisurely pace to sightsee and it took us about an hour to get back to the bridge to Banff. We stopped at the
Indian Trading Post for some shopping. Mom bought some gifts and we crossed the bridge and luckily found the Post Office still open at 2pm on Saturday so she could mail herself a package. After that, Mom and Judy went back to their room. Clay and I walked on over to Safeway again, so I could get the Starbucks Banff mug now that I had seen the view and a bear. Clay and I also checked out some menus on the way there and back to scout locations for dinner. We choose Earl's, a Canadian chain. We also got trapped at candy shop window across the street from our hotel. We later realized that the delicious aromas were being blown out by a fan from a grill above that window! It lured us right in and we could scarcely pull ourselves away!
About 5pm, we all went out to get dinner. We got to
Earl's in time to get a table in the bar without a wait. We had drinks, with 2 pizzas to share and Clay had a sandwich. This was the first night that I felt energetic enough to drink any alcohol! Two hours in time difference and it took me 5 days to get over it. We shared a chocolate sticky toffee pudding for dessert. I can't believe we didn't get a photo. I seem to recall that Clay also got a sundae of his own.
We wandered and shopped some more and then went back to the Mount Royal Hotel and to bed. We have to pack up again tonight.
Photos
