Lake Louise

What a mixed bag Lake Louise was!

This is a most gobsmacking area, both for the quality of the views and also the ahem breadth of cuisines available in the area. At the same time as I struggled to find food to eat in the local mini-market, there is a hotel with fine dining room and pub that has European trained chefs, including pastry chefs, just around the corner. And I don't mean the Fairmont hotel at Lake Louise either! (Hint for coeliacs - BYO food!)

The village is small and has a shopping plaza with a very nice book shop. Not what one expects but it was a good shop. Wish we had bought something there. The national park place was interesting but dull at the same time. (Just like my notes accompanying these pictures!) Since we were whacked by the time we looked at the national park place, we just sat down and watched a kids' doco on how the Rockies formed. We enjoyed it. We watched all bar the credits at the end (and probably would've watched the credits but we got a subtle hint that they were closing - oh! People! You watched all of it????). The host of the doco was a complete whacko but we learned stuff. Like how to tell if rock is shale/mudstone (wet it and rub it). Sandstone feels rough against your teeth (!!!). Limestone dissolves in acid (not many of us carry vinegar around but maybe someone has a little sachet left over from some fish and chips! Not that I found fish and chips there. Gosh I miss fish and chips, not that I could have them Back 'Ome either....). The park ranger said we are about the first people to watch the whole thing. Well why not? It is amusing and educational, even for big Know-It-Alls like us!


Here's some shots taken walking up to the Lake from the village. It is only about 4km. We can eat 4km of walking normally, but this was in quite sub-zero temps (about -15C, I think almost subzero F as well) up a steep hill on ice and snow.


Along the way we met another AUSTRALIAN. How on earth do we do it? We are halfway around the world from home and we meet Aussies. Like doooods, we want to meet other people!


Even worse, he was from the same suburb of Melbourne where I spent the first 25 years of my life (Ringwood). He says it has gone downhill since I was there. He and Nathan had a good chat.




Crikey! The picnic ground is CLOSED? Y'kidding me! Whyeverso?


Aren't these chalets cute in the snow - it is dripping off them just like icing on gingerbread houses!


Nathan demonstrates how cold it was - our breath was forming hoar frost! It was driving me insane cos I could keep my face covered (so it didn't freeze) or I could see (my glasses kept fogging up if I breathed with my face covered). I chose to not see as well as I could. Mostly. After all, the scenery is on a grand scale and not being able to focus on it was not really impairing my ability to see it.


These were the best icicles we saw on the whole trip. Imagine one of them breaking off! Be like a spear through someone's head....


It might have been so cold that the hoar frost was building but the creek was still bounding along with some open water here and there.

Finally we came in sight of the World Famous Lake Louise Fairmont hotel. Have you ever heard of World Famous sites (or burgers/food) that you've never heard of before you came across them at their World Famous site? Well this one I reckon really is World Famous! This is one of the few World Famous sites that I've ever heard of!


Next - Lake Louise itself.

Banff 2

We walked a lot around Banff. It was an education, walking in my snowboots (and discovering that they would rub my legs raw if I laced them up to the top! Ouch!). We don't get much snow and ice in Oz, and Banff had had a warm snap and rain and then cold temps, so there was plenty of ice. Shuffling seemed to be the best way to stay upright and minimise likelihood of slipping, and let me tell you there was PLENTY of opportunity for stacking on the ice. Some shops and homes kept their sidewalks clear and others? Welllll..... One of the slipperiest places was the Safeway carpark - lord knows what the local drivers do there but.

Speaking of the Safeway, it always surprises me when I go to a town and can't find gluten free food. After all, we were in a tourist town and gluten free food was pretty scarce. In retrospect, Calgary was a coeliac heaven - we did find a good organic supermarket, right by a light rail station, that stocked a good range of GF foods, including corn thins and a local GF bakery's products (GF/DF pumpkin pie! Oh it was YUMMY! I shall never see its likes again, alas!). An organic bakery had what they called "gluten free" brownies but when I asked, they said "oh, no, we can't guarantee they are gluten free!" So why call them gluten free? Low gluten is truer! We did have a good meal at the Rose and Crown pub - they did what I call pub food. They are one of the many eateries that are upstairs and are accessed by a set of doors and lots of stairs - hole in the wall type doors. The Safeway did not have a good range of GF foods. Indeed it had hardly any that I could find.

Enough crabbing. Banff was pretty, just not coeliac friendly.


(I am also terribly surprised that NOONE was using the bike rack by Bow Falls! Those are the rapids above Bow Falls in the pic below.)



(And NOONE was using the picnic tables. Like DOOOOOODS, it was only -17C, what are you, a pack of wusses? (If I wrote nancies, would anyone spank me?) Just cos your butts would freeze off if you sat on the snowy seats.... The odd crow/raven might steal your food cos they will be hungry too!)

But Banff was not about food. Banff was about cold and walking EVERYWHERE. Y'see they advertised a bus service that went past the youth hostel. The bus ran every 40 minutes. So after our meal the first night, we waited at the bus stop. We made sure that we had the right change, and then we saw the bus turn right one street before it reached the stop we were waiting at. We were confuzzled by this, and cranky cos it was cold and dark and we Had Had Enough. The map said the bus went past our stop.


(I am very cold in this shot - I don't have a nice lined tuque yet)

Turns out that we had the NEW new map. The bus had not been going along the main street as it had been closed due to extremely icy conditions. We had the map/timetable that was correct for the day after we left, not the current timetable. It made for crankiness as the walk was reasonably long and up a steady hill.

We never did manage to catch the bus.

It didn't run past these places:

Why do people like houses that are EXACTLY the same as the house next door? I must just prize individuality more than most (though you can find 20 of our house in our neighbourhood Back 'Ome, but at least the houses around ours are not the same as ours).

But jeez we saw a lot of prettiness.

(Cascade Mountain)

Lots of pretties!

(Mt Rundle)

Even more pretties!

(Mt Rundle)

More pretties than you can poke a stick at! Or maybe a hoodoo at


Pretties all round!


(up the river)


(down the river)

Too many pretties?


NEVER!




Some old railway hotel for you - the famous Banff Springs?


And from afar, on the road to the hoodoo gurus!

(The funny thing is that you think the hotel is up the hillside a fair way but really? It is in the valley!)

It has a great view along part of the Bow Valley - what a fabulous, ground out valley it is too!


How's this for a snow plough?


Looks just like the prow of a ship, for a similar reason, but it really is attached to this:


But alas, all good things must come to an end, so we moved on to LAKE LOUISE!

Rocky Mountain Dreaming

Calgary is Not Very Far At All from the Canadian Rocky Mountains (though I do own it is a fair whack away from the Colorado Rockies). We waved goodbye to Calgary and settled back for the ride.


The Greyhound seems to take no time at all to get one in (pathetically small point and shoot) camera range, and then the pictures begin! (BTW, for the trip to Banff, I recommend sitting on the right side of the bus if you want to see lots of mountains.)

Woo hoo!








(mountains behind Canmore)



The Canadian Rockies are quite different from the ones we knew in Colorado. These ones are made of limestone and shorter, though I think somewhat more spectacular as a result. All those layers upon layers of rock make fascinating patterns. The snow upon them looks fantastic - it really highlights the layering. The valleys seem to be wider too.




(Highway 1 across Canada)

You will get the feeling I loved the Canadian Rockies. Dunno how!





Be warned, millions of pictures will follow in the next few posts...