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(Oh, come on! It's a classic!)
I could write thousands of words about the holiday but I'll resist the temptation. I have to write something though, or it'll fade, despite the scribbled trip diary I faithfully wrote up every night, the journal propped on my knees, a drink at hand.
We flew out to Calgary, hired a car (they didn't have the one we ordered so we were upgraded; one of the choices was a Chevy Impala. No prizes for guessing which we drove off in, even though David, quite rightly, pointed out it bears no resemblance to the Metallicar...) and drove straight to Banff (which I apparently have been calling Bamff all my life which is much cuter but wrong. Ah, well.) The Rockies were there on the horizon, rising up out of flat farmland, snow-capped and inviting. Foothills, really, as we discovered when we saw the real mountains, but thrilling.
Our cottage in Banff was nice; part of a mini village on the outskirts and surrounded by forest and mountains slap bang there everywhere you looked. The girls were obsessed by the waterslide in the pool and no day was complete without a visit there, although I refused to go down them (fast, terrifying and hey, I wear glasses!). The scenery was wasted on them but until they began mimicking us in the backseat (Eleanor: Oh, look, Lauren! A mountain! Lauren: It's so stunning! Eleanor: Yes. And spectacular! Just like the last one!) we enthused without stopping. After the mimicking we just did it louder.
The most memorable day there, maybe even of the whole holiday, was the Lake Louise trip. By then we'd walked on the Athabasca glacier, seen turquoise lakes galore, gone up the gondola and been in the cup of a ring of mountains, thickly forested to the treeline, then bare and desolate, and we'd realised that the one problem with the place was the bloody tourists.
Yes, I know. Shut up.
We arrived at Lake Peyto, breathtakingly beautiful, after a short ten minute walk uphill, to find that the coaches were allowed to drive right to the top and one had just disgorged a few hundred people who swarmed over the viewpoint, went click, click, snap and scurried back to the coach. I seriously doubt some of them even looked at the view as they placed their backs to it, smiled for the camera, and left.
So for Lake Louise, one of the most photographed spots in Canada, we got up early and arrived well before the crowd. It was somewhere I'd wanted to go; Robert Heinlein mentions it in Tramp Royale and, in keeping with the Stargate theme that was a B plot to the holiday, I remembered seeing it on a documentary type thing as RDA, BB, and JF were all there a year or two ago for a charity ski event (must watch that again...).
We set off around the lake in virtual peace on a beautiful morning (the weather, for the entire trip, was perfect. Assume cloudless blue skies, the odd cool breeze and high 20s and you'll be on the button). It was an easy, flat walk of about 30 minutes and we were just feeling so very happy with ourselves that we decided to take one of the trails up to the Teashop of the Six Glaciers (we'd become total glacier addicts by then). It seemed... a little far (11km round trip), but, hey, we could always turn back! Except, when do we ever do that?
There was an odd rumble of thunder which puzzled us as the skies were clear, until we clicked that it was an avalanche. On the three hour round trip, we heard that 8 times and saw two of them; a spill of snow crashing like water down the mountainside with an echoing roll of sound.
The walk was hard, with steep dropaways next to a trail a few feet wide. We'd got snacks, water, a first aid kit, but the bulk of the supplies were in the car as we'd been expecting to do a short walk, not this. But the teashop beckoned and eventually, hot, exhausted, legs trembling (maybe that was just me..) we got there.
I'd been wondering how there could be a teashop in the middle of nowhere but, scarred by a childhood memory of climbing Snowden for 7 hours and then arriving at the summit to find a train goes up it, I assumed there was a back road in or something.
Umm, no. The supplies are all airlifted in at the start of the season then carried up the path I'd just sweated up, by pack or horse (we'd noticed the horses... or what they'd left behind). So no ice cream, chocolate milk or any of the other treats we'd been promising a rebellious, worn out Lauren, but a PB sandwhich for $6 and juice made from powder. Not that I grudged a penny of the bill, mind you; just swooningly grateful for a loo (hole in ground) and something other than warm water and a granola bar).
The way back, L fell. I'd held her hand for hours and I let go on a flat, gravelly bit and she went smack down. The foaming spray we had with us cleaned the dirt and grit out of her bleeding knees but had leaked over all the Band Aids so her knees dripped blood, getting us horrified looks off everyone we passed until David put her on his shoulders for two miles, when it changed to admiring looks for his heroism ::g:: A man stopped to say seeing the girls climb had inspired him, heh.
Okay, this is getting long! I'll leave it here and do another bit tomorrow; Kelowna and on to Vancouver Island.
And here's Lake Louise.
I could write thousands of words about the holiday but I'll resist the temptation. I have to write something though, or it'll fade, despite the scribbled trip diary I faithfully wrote up every night, the journal propped on my knees, a drink at hand.
We flew out to Calgary, hired a car (they didn't have the one we ordered so we were upgraded; one of the choices was a Chevy Impala. No prizes for guessing which we drove off in, even though David, quite rightly, pointed out it bears no resemblance to the Metallicar...) and drove straight to Banff (which I apparently have been calling Bamff all my life which is much cuter but wrong. Ah, well.) The Rockies were there on the horizon, rising up out of flat farmland, snow-capped and inviting. Foothills, really, as we discovered when we saw the real mountains, but thrilling.
Our cottage in Banff was nice; part of a mini village on the outskirts and surrounded by forest and mountains slap bang there everywhere you looked. The girls were obsessed by the waterslide in the pool and no day was complete without a visit there, although I refused to go down them (fast, terrifying and hey, I wear glasses!). The scenery was wasted on them but until they began mimicking us in the backseat (Eleanor: Oh, look, Lauren! A mountain! Lauren: It's so stunning! Eleanor: Yes. And spectacular! Just like the last one!) we enthused without stopping. After the mimicking we just did it louder.
The most memorable day there, maybe even of the whole holiday, was the Lake Louise trip. By then we'd walked on the Athabasca glacier, seen turquoise lakes galore, gone up the gondola and been in the cup of a ring of mountains, thickly forested to the treeline, then bare and desolate, and we'd realised that the one problem with the place was the bloody tourists.
Yes, I know. Shut up.
We arrived at Lake Peyto, breathtakingly beautiful, after a short ten minute walk uphill, to find that the coaches were allowed to drive right to the top and one had just disgorged a few hundred people who swarmed over the viewpoint, went click, click, snap and scurried back to the coach. I seriously doubt some of them even looked at the view as they placed their backs to it, smiled for the camera, and left.
So for Lake Louise, one of the most photographed spots in Canada, we got up early and arrived well before the crowd. It was somewhere I'd wanted to go; Robert Heinlein mentions it in Tramp Royale and, in keeping with the Stargate theme that was a B plot to the holiday, I remembered seeing it on a documentary type thing as RDA, BB, and JF were all there a year or two ago for a charity ski event (must watch that again...).
We set off around the lake in virtual peace on a beautiful morning (the weather, for the entire trip, was perfect. Assume cloudless blue skies, the odd cool breeze and high 20s and you'll be on the button). It was an easy, flat walk of about 30 minutes and we were just feeling so very happy with ourselves that we decided to take one of the trails up to the Teashop of the Six Glaciers (we'd become total glacier addicts by then). It seemed... a little far (11km round trip), but, hey, we could always turn back! Except, when do we ever do that?
There was an odd rumble of thunder which puzzled us as the skies were clear, until we clicked that it was an avalanche. On the three hour round trip, we heard that 8 times and saw two of them; a spill of snow crashing like water down the mountainside with an echoing roll of sound.
The walk was hard, with steep dropaways next to a trail a few feet wide. We'd got snacks, water, a first aid kit, but the bulk of the supplies were in the car as we'd been expecting to do a short walk, not this. But the teashop beckoned and eventually, hot, exhausted, legs trembling (maybe that was just me..) we got there.
I'd been wondering how there could be a teashop in the middle of nowhere but, scarred by a childhood memory of climbing Snowden for 7 hours and then arriving at the summit to find a train goes up it, I assumed there was a back road in or something.
Umm, no. The supplies are all airlifted in at the start of the season then carried up the path I'd just sweated up, by pack or horse (we'd noticed the horses... or what they'd left behind). So no ice cream, chocolate milk or any of the other treats we'd been promising a rebellious, worn out Lauren, but a PB sandwhich for $6 and juice made from powder. Not that I grudged a penny of the bill, mind you; just swooningly grateful for a loo (hole in ground) and something other than warm water and a granola bar).
The way back, L fell. I'd held her hand for hours and I let go on a flat, gravelly bit and she went smack down. The foaming spray we had with us cleaned the dirt and grit out of her bleeding knees but had leaked over all the Band Aids so her knees dripped blood, getting us horrified looks off everyone we passed until David put her on his shoulders for two miles, when it changed to admiring looks for his heroism ::g:: A man stopped to say seeing the girls climb had inspired him, heh.
Okay, this is getting long! I'll leave it here and do another bit tomorrow; Kelowna and on to Vancouver Island.
And here's Lake Louise.
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