The Beauty of Banff Was Delivered Loud and Clear

 

SIT arrived at our camping spot in the provincial park at Banff. We didn’t make reservations much in advance so we were just going to be there for three nights. You know what that means? We had to plan and move!

The View From our Trailer

We scoped out the sites we wanted to take in and established a plan of attack. It’s a good thing Tory worked on an incident management team as her skills of “planning an attack” came in handy. Not really, just thought we would throw that in!

A park in town is next to the river

 

The Main Street View from the Bridge

We toured the town via our feet and enjoyed wandering aimlessly. For Steve it wasn’t aimlessly as he had a mission to find a place to eat lunch!  We found an Italian restaurant and decided it smelled really, really good so we landed there. It was as good as it smelled!

We concluded that we should visit the Banff upper hot springs. Now these hot springs are within Banff National Park which have been nicely developed. They just need a bigger pool as it was a busy little spot. We selected this as one of our must things to do since I had one of my graceful moments a few days before and decided to trip and fall almost landing on my face. Luckily my chest and shoulder stepped up to take the blow. Izzy was with me and believe it or not she didn’t laugh although I figured she would!  The hot springs did feel nice!

In our wanderings around the next day we decided to go visit the Cascade Gardens. The gardens are located at the Parks Canada Administrative Building. Imagine having to go to work every day here and see this out your office. Not bad!

      

 

 

It also was a location selected by this bridal couple to have their wedding. We took a few pictures while the professional photographer to pictures as well. Truly a beautiful setting for a wedding.

 

The other thing we stumbled across, well not literally, was a bike ride taking place. It was an 80K and started at 0700. We stopped and chatted with one gentleman that had completed the race already. It looked like they had a pretty large turnout based on all the bikes we saw parked.

They Rode the Distance

As you work your way into town from the gardens you cross the Bow River. Now if you have been a faithful reader and read the post where we went to the icelfields, you would have discovered that Bow Lake and Bow River are formed from the Bow Glacier. If you haven’t been a faithful reader and just jumped to this post because you thought the pictures of Banff would be cool, you’re forgiven!

The Bow River

 

We enjoyed the afternoon sitting on a balcony eating lunch and having a beer. The view from one-story up was pretty cool, plus the people watching from above was fun too. We discovered another way to see the town during our foot tour. No it wasn’t to get the red wagon and hitch Izzy up to it but you’re close. How about via horse and buggy? 

 

A Toast to Banff

 

The trip to Banff was complete with a nice heavy rain and pretty loud and close thunderstorm. Good thing we had made it back to our current spot in the park before it hit!