Day 15 - Stuff

Sweet lovely Alan is writing the blog today and Sarah may have a few comments which will be in red.

 

Today was another one of those take-it-easy sort of days because we're both a bit exhausted at the moment and Sarah says she's sick. Nooo, I'm just coughing for the fun of it. So we got moving late in the morning and drove back to Lake Lousie. We had only spent 5 minutes there a couple of days ago so we wanted to go back for a proper visit. So we drove the 56 kilometres, most of which was through roadwork zones and arrived back at Lake Louise. When we got out of the car it seemed quite pleasant, but after walking the 100 metres or so up to the lake, the temperature must have dropped a good few degrees and there was a wind blowing into our faces. I guess it's because the wind comes off the glacier up on the mountain above the lake.

 

We took a few photos and then went for a walk around the boardwalk area to the left of the lake. We could only go as far as the boathouse before the snow on the path got far to deep and dangerous so we had to turn back. I had this lovely walk planned which would give a great view looking back over the lake to the Fairmont.  Oh well, maybe next time.  We could see people cross-country skiing across the lake in the distance. That looked like fun. We really need to learn how to ski.

 

We walked around the other side of the lake and it started to get even colder. The little snow flurries which were falling turned into proper snow. Some of the snowflakes were quite hard when they hit us in the face. We walked around for a bit longer and then decided that it was time to say goodbye to Lake Louise. It will be nice to get back there some day when the lake isn't completely frozen. There were some patches where it was sunny, the wind wasn't blowing and we could just stand there as it snowed on us.  I like being snowed on.

 

We drove to the other side of town, where the ski area is. We parked and got out of the car to watch the skiers briefly and it was funny to watch them going over ski jumps and then there was a big inflatable cushion jump which everyone was crashing onto. After a few minutes of that we were back in the car and making our way back to Banff. We decided to take the back road this time to avoid all of the roadwork and along the way, in the middle of nowhere, we came across a memorial site for the Castle Mountain internment camp, which was used for Eastern European prisoners of war during World War 1. It must have been an awful place to be back then in the freezing cold temperatures.  -25 degrees is what it said I think.

 

When we arrived back in Banff, we took a drive up to a 'surprise corner' which is a little known spot to get great views of the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. We took a couple of photos, which were much more impressive than the ones we took yesterday over the other side of the hotel. It's a bad spot though, because to get to the viewing platform, you have to run across the road which has a blind corner from both directions. Maybe that's the surprise. You really do have to be very careful.

 

Next up, we returned to the market that we had found yesterday and bought some food which we bought back to our hotel room to eat. A ham and salad roll and a roast beef and salad roll. 

 

We ended up at Chili's again for dinner since it's only 1 minute walk from our hotel, plus almost every other restaurant in Banff is unbelievably expensive. We both had a mesquite salad and a chocolate milkshake. Sarah spent the entire meal picking through her salad, eating it one corn kernel at a time. I think that's the first time ever that I've actually finished a meal before her. There was a lot of capsicum and I've already got a sore throat so I didn't want it repeating on me all night.

 

Tonight is our last night in Banff before heading off to Calgary tomorrow. I wouldn't mind going to Sunshine Ski Resort although it is 23 kms in the wrong direction.  They have had 7cms of snow in the last 24 hours.