en route to Lake Louise

Despite a warm round of apparent indifference, I persist in posting more! Your feedback is welcome* - I can only imagine that photos of snow capped mountains don't do it for most people. I guess it is very normal for those in the north, but it sure as hell is different for someone who comes from a place where it NEVER snows. Also Australian mountains are in general pretty pathetic. Our ranges have been ground down over so many gazillions of years that there's only a couple of thousand metres (6,000') left if we are lucky. Mostly we aren't lucky. Plus not a whole lot of them get snow and nothing like the Rockies do.

The highlight of the short trip from Banff to Lake Louise on the Greyhound bus is this:


Castle Mountain.

There are other mountains and pretty views along the way


and a very interesting and pretty parkway to drive along if you have your own car, but this is The Big One.





We arrived at Lake Louise just at sunset.


After dragging our suitcases a few hundred metres through the snow, we found our lodgings for the night - the Lake Louise International Hostel. It's in two parts so if you go there you'll find reception at the back of the larger building on the left. Just follow the deck. Don't stand at the door to the rightwards building, like I did, and wonder why you can't get in. Duh!

At this point I should I found the international hostels in Calgary, Banff and Lake Louise to be clean and good places to stay, particularly if you are on a budget. I recommend them and would stay at them again, even if the Banff hostel is two km out of town. The Banff and Lake Louise hostels are quite new, which means they have nice furnishings and have not gotten shabby around the edges. (Though I would very much like it if the girls who shared the toilets with me, though not at the *exact* same time, had figured out that they were NOT auto-flushing - EWWWW!). I was surprised by the bed at Lake Louise when I flung myself on it - it was a 4" mattress pad. We had private rooms at each of them, though not always private bathrooms. The central Vancouver hostel was very interesting and they've tried hard to make it really funky, but it has challenges associated with old city buildings (including vermin problems) and does not have stoves/cookers/ranges due to fire regs! The Vancouver mob did fix our toilet promptly, as it kept flushing every 10 minutes, and the room was fine - rather cute in a vaguely art deco sort of way. Just don't get a room on the lower floors as there is a dance club under the hostel and boy does the noise travel! I have no idea why the Canadian hostels leave most of those in the USA so far in the dark - mebbe we have not stayed at the right hostels in the US.

Next - Way Too Many Pictures of a Very Snowy Lake Louise!

(*mrspao - this does not mean you need to comment on every post ;-) It is very sweet of you though)