Days 32 and 33
Whooo! In the mountains! Man, these mountains are incredible, they seem way more pronounced than the coastal mountains, they seem to go almost straight up and have way more geologic detail than I’m used to. Started off the morning by driving to Sunshine ski resort, but decided not to head up as the visibility didn’t seem great and it was $80. Would love to come back and ski it! Headed back in to Starbucks to do a little job searching, then met up with an old snowboard.com friend (Hi Rachel!) for lunch, funnily enough this was the first time we’d ever met in real life. Ah the internet. Got some great tips from her for afternoon adventures, the most memorable one was taking the Smith Dorrian trail which is a gravel road (though huge, with a 80km/h speed limit) though the mountains from Canmore over to Kananaskis. It was virtually deserted and very pretty. Unfortunately for my whole time here, the weather has been patchy. Occasionally the sun will come out, but I haven’t had a full view of a lot of the mountains around here. Went up to the actual Lake Louise too as I’ve seen it in so many pictures. I just missed the sun, as it went behind the mountain as I got there, and the lake was still frozen so I didn’t get to see the awesome blue colour, but it was still very pretty.
Spent my second night in Lake Louise and will make my way to Calgary tonight!
Days 34 to 36
Packed up my stuff in Lake Louise and lazily made my way into Calgary, decided not to take the main highway in as I knew I’d be driving it again on my way out of Calgary. Took the 1A (smaller road) along and drove into Calgary to meet up with my friend Krista. We met up and went and picked up supplies (Chinese food and booze, of course) and proceeded to have an excellent lazy night with drinks and food. The rest of the weekend was great, lots of relaxing and re-supplying. Bonus shout-out to the Bass Pro shop that is HUGE and full of hilarious stuff (like a giant fish tank full of bass) and big nature dioramas with stuffed Elk, Moose and more. Finally watched my first UFC fight as well (113).
Day 37
Took off from Calgary and made my way towards the Banff – Jasper highway, I was excited as the weather was awesome, bluebird with a few puffy clouds to help make pictures better. I had been saving the Lake Minnewanka loop near Banff for good weather, and I had it! Drove in and the lake itself was quite pretty, but still a little frozen. There were a couple of boats trying to break up the ice but not having a ton of luck. Drove a little further on the loop to find some bighorn sheep on the road, they were cooperative and allowed me to get some good photos (only of the females though, the males with the big horns were hidden away in the forest). Next on the loop was Two Jack Lake and it was stunning! (See picture below).
After that I headed off towards Jasper, stopping at the Columbia Icefields for a look around, it was cool, but I figured I would see some more glaciers and icefields in Alaska so I kept going. The Banff-Jasper road really is amazing, I always knew it would be nice to drive but it is awesome.
Rolled into Jasper around dinner time and started to wonder where I was going to sleep for the night, I felt like camping or finding a cheap motel so I kept going. Drove up to the Miette hotsprings as I thought there was a hostel there but I had just read the map wrong (there were cabins and a motel, but were too expensive for me). I ended up camping by a lake in the William Switzer provincial park. Nice and relaxing.
