Rockies bound

Sunday 15th September

We woke up in the tent as it was getting light and celebrated the fact that we were still alive and hadn’t become a midnight snack for the bears! We had both woken up in the middle of the night hearing a noise – it had sounded like an angry/hungry bear breathing heavily near our tent(!)…… Turns out it was the man in the tent next to ours snoring loudly. Phewph! But it had kept us awake a little with our imaginations running wild.

The thick duvet had kept us very snug in the night and we didn’t realise how cold it was until we got up to get ready! We went to the kitchen where Michael was making breakfast and we helped ourselves to oatmeal with various toppings, including some delicious Canadian maple syrup.

After breakfast we packed up our bags and said goodbye to Michael and the nice couple we had met last night and got in the car and back on the road. We headed for Yoho National Park, on the Trans Canada Highway, where we were going to stop off at Emerald lake. We arrived and there was a huge queue for the car park, so Harry stayed in the car while I just jumped out to take a few photos. It was pretty and definitely more of an emerald colour compared to some of the other lakes!

I jumped back in the car and we got back on the Trans Canada Highway, on towards Lake Louise (the town). We pulled over at a little lake and picnic area to eat our packed lunch.

When we reached Lake Louise (the town), we headed north to drive the famous Icefields Parkway road with all its scenery and sights. The scenery was beautiful as usual…

We pulled over at Bow Lake viewpoint where we saw the lovely bow lake but also our first glacier – Crowfoot glacier, which was pretty incredible!

We continued along the Icefields Parkway…

Our next pull over was Peyto lake. We parked the car and walked a short way uphill to the viewpoint.

We learnt about how the lakes get their colour from an information board which was interesting…

We didn’t stay too long as it was pretty busy. We had noticed everywhere had got a lot more touristy and busy as we entered the actual Rockies area of Canada compared to our previous stops like Whistler, Revelstoke and Golden.

We started our drive back down then Icefields parkway – we weren’t going any further up the road as a lot of the viewpoints were closed following the Jasper wildfires and it apparently looks very black and sad up there. On our way back down we pulled into another Bow Lake view point. We parked the car and got out for a walk around. We popped into the cafe at Bow Lodge for a cuppa and sweet treat to share.

We wandered around the shoreline…

We then got back in the car and drove back to Lake Louise (the town), to our BnB for the night called Mountaineer Lodge and checked in.

There wasn’t much choice of restaurants in Lake Louise and the one we had our eye on was closing early because it was a Sunday. So we ended up at Timberwolf Pizza and Pasta cafe where we both had a pizza for dinner.

As it was still light, we thought we would drive to Lake Louise (the actual lake) for dusk (even though we were going tomorrow) just to see what it was like at a different time of day, and hopefully when it was less busy. The colours reflected from the sky in the lake were so beautiful and it was really serene and peaceful.

We then went back to our BnB and got an early night before our early rise tomorrow.