When we left Icefields Parkway early, we escaped to the town of Banff for two nights. Our first time out in the town we walked around a little. The first playground we attempted to go to was closed for upgrades/construction. Later, we discovered there was another campground right at the end of the main street that would have been about a 2 minute walk away had we known. It had a nice tree trunk for Jordan to climb, also with amazing views in both directions.
Next, we moved to Lake Louise. Since we were coming from so close and check-in wasn't until 2pm, we stopped by the local playground with the RV for a bit and had lunch. The Banff area playgrounds have the most amazing views. The campground was nice... not the most amazing views, but nice. You share a pull-through area with another camper, but are faced away. Anjuli's old residency friend & fam joined us on the spot facing us after the first night.
Our first evening, we went up the Lake Louise gondola as a spur of the moment thing. It was fun. Jordan waited in line and hopped on her first gondola. She got to look through the giant binocular things at the top. We got our first view of the lake itself and a better view of many of the mountains.
The next day, by ourselves still, we went to Lake Louise and rented a canoe. Jordan paddled for a bit, hitting Anjuli in the head several times... I mean, once or twice would have been excusable as a mistake, but c'mon babycakes! The water was so amazingly teal. The color in these pictures is actually what it looked like when looking down out of the boat. It's unreal. Make sure you make shuttle reservations ahead of time for Lake Louise or Moraine Lake on the Parks Canada website so you don't have to pay a ton for a private one. The system is decent - you park at the ski hill/gondola area where there is a ton of parking and hop on the next shuttle within your 1 hour reservation. Getting back, you wait in line and hop on, which was pretty smooth.
The Fords had arrived the night before, with Chris showing up sometime in the early morning hours after working super late. He rallied though and we all hopped on the shuttle to Moraine Lake. We did the short climb up the rock area at the beginning to get a nice view. Jordan loved playing with Audrey, aka Mang-ey.
There was a nice walk along the river at the campground that we went to a few times.
The last day, we dropped off Karen and her son Paul to go for a walk at Lake Louise since we were able to drive up without parking, then we headed over to Morant's curve, the scenic viewpoint above. We waited about 10 minutes and a train came by so we could take the classic photo. Jordan had her bubble maker that she shot through a hole in the barrier right behind us that separated us from the road. We wondered what the bikers thought when they saw the bubbles emerging into the road (that's a favorite road for bikers).
Next we headed South to Radium Hot Springs...
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