Wednesday 13th May

(Canadian photos now on Picasaweb. Click on 'My Picasa Photo Albums')

Today dawned sunny and with high clouds although it had snowed during the night as new snow was lying on the ground. After a wonderful buffet breakfast (I didn’t even look what was on offer as I just stuck to cereal, fruit and yoghurt) we set of in our coach. Today turned out to be what “The Rockies” are all about - snow covered high peaks soaring up into the blue sky with deep valleys below.
Our day started at Chateau Lake Louise - the photo of which seems to epitomise the Canadian Rockies. The 1000 room hotel was first conceived by the Canadian Pacific Railway at the end of the 19th century, as a vacation destination to lure moneyed travellers into taking trains and heading West, and was gradually built up at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century to the world famous resort it is today. Lake Louse looked magnificent - still frozen over - nestled between the mountains. The next stop was Johnson Canyon. We walked the 0.7km to the Lower Falls - the high path following the river far below, and quite a lot of the walk was along a narrow boardwalk fixed into the cliff face with nothing underneath but the rushing river. The walk continued for a further 3km, but time restrictions did not allow us to go any further.

... and we also spotted a little chipmunk ...

We then paid a brief visit to the famous Banff Springs Hotel, another former Canadian Pacific Railway hotel constructed between spring of 1887 and 1888. The hotel was publicly opened on June 1, 1888 and rebuilt in the 1920s after a fire. A world famous golf course is at this hotel resort, and again the views are stunning. After a couple of hours free-time in Banff, where we had lunch, we took the gondola up to the top of Sulphur Mountain. This was opened around 1960 and is Canada‘s first gondola. The ride to the nearly 2300m summit took 8 minutes. The view from the top over Banff were wonderful, but the cloud came down after a while and it started to snow blocking some of the views. It was bloomin’ cold at that altitude too! Altogether a fab day with stunning scenery.