Banff and Canmore, Canada

30 August – 02 September 2023

We are finally reaching our destination—the Rocky Mountains. Our route took us through Kootenay National Park in Canada, a land of ice and fire. We saw vast expanses of burned trees in this linear park. Park officials say that 25 percent of the park has burned from lightning strikes in the past 20 years, but what we could see suggested that more than 50 percent has burned. This park was created because the city of Banff wanted a better road connection to the west. The federal government agreed to build the road in exchange for a wide swath of land adjoining the road, which it made into the park. JANE: A transportation planner was on ball on this one!

En Route from Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho

Lodging

We stayed in the town of Canmore, about 20 minutes east of Banff. The population is 17,000 and growing quickly with huge tourist lodges. We stayed in a one-bedroom apartment called Basecamp, a large operation with multiple facilities in the region. Check in is all online, and they assign you a key code for access. Simple and neat.

Eats

31 August 2023

Lake Louise

We were taking a chance by heading to Lake Louise for the day without making reservations days in advance for parking or shuttle buses. The standard advice is to arrive before 6 am. Fat chance. We arrived close to noon, followed the directions of many, many parking attendants who waved us ahead through a maze of unpaved lots, and we landed a parking spot on gravel within walking distance of the lake and the historic hotel. But the bus shuttles that originate in this parking lot and take you to Lake Moraine, the treasure nearby, were sold out. NEIL and DAVID: Sorry.

Lake Louise is beautiful, although the heavy overcast made it impossible to see the famous peak behind it. Crowds of tourists, and especially Sikh families, were taking photographs at the lake edge. The enormous Fairmont hotel underwent a major face lift in the 1980s and lacks the charm it probably once had. We had lunch there on terrace but were glad we didn’t splurge on a hotel room. As a child, Bonnie often heard about Lake Louise from her mother, who traveled there with her parents in the mid 1940s.

The other memorable part of our day was the journey back to our lodging in Canmore. What should have been a one-hour trip took four hours in two lanes of a barely moving traffic. A large sink hole had opened up in the Trans-Canada Highway. There are very few roads except for this highway. Traffic had to be detoured off the highway and through the center of the small tourist town of Banff. The detour twice crossed railroad tracks in town that have very long trains running once an hour. Oh well. In the midst of the traffic jam, people got out of their cars to walk or pee. Everyone was polite. Truly Canadian.

**Met three guys from Amherst, Massachusetts. One was a train spotter with camera poised.**

Eats

01 September 2023

With heavy gray skies for two days, we were disappointed that we would not clearly see the Rocky Mountains. Happily, this morning the skies started to clear and we were able to make out the tops of the peaks. Compared to the Sierra Nevada mountains, the Rockys are older, more rounded, and have pronounced uplifting at extraordinary angles. Spectacular.

Given how we struck out on shuttles and tours near Lake Louise, we decided to explore less famous places closer to our lodging.

Cave and Basin National Historic Site

It was a cave. Robert needed to see it. Bonnie slogged along but was delighted by this charming historic spot. The small cave, a short distance from the center of the town of Banff, was the reason this first Canadian national park was established. Although indigenous people long used the cave for cultural and spiritual ceremonies, Europeans claimed they discovered the cave and hot spring in 1883, at the same time the railway was reaching the Rockys. A variety of entrepreneurs were eager to attract wealthy tourists from the East, causing multiple conflicts. The Canadian government stepped in and took control of the cave the surrounding ten-mile area of land—the first such intervention of the government that laid the way for the national park system.

What remains is the attractive stone bathhouse (replica) that once held a large, hot springs swimming pool, now closed along with the nearby hot springs to protect an endangered snail that only exists in this locale. Belvederes on the building still offer views of the valley. and trails on wooden boardwalks through the forest pass warm streams that are full of white algae. The streams flow into a large meadow that stays warm during the winter, serving as habitat to many animals.

Whyte Museum

Bonnie’s research paid off again. After lunch outdoors on the bustling Main Street of Banff, we walked to the Whyte Museum, founded by the painters Peter and Catherine Whyte and devoted to the cultural heritage of the Rocky Mountains. The two met in 1925 as students at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Peter was raised in Banff and showed artistic talent as a child. By age ten he had private art lessons and soon connected with well-known artists who visited Banff, often accompanying them on hikes to scenic spots. After enrolling for a year at Otis in Los Angeles, he took the suggestion of one notable artist to study in Boston. Catherine came from an affluent family in Concord, Massachusetts. She was a Boston debutante and dated a Rockefeller one summer in Maine. Her father was the treasurer and vice president of one the first electrical engineering firms in the nation. Think hydroelectric power plants and electric railways. The small Whyte Museum contains art as well as artifacts from the history of Banff, all beautifully displayed. Worth a visit.

**During covid, the artist took walks on one river each day and painted each bird he spotted. Surprisingly, he did not see a Canadian goose.**

Banff Springs Hotel

We walked about a mile from town to this enormous, historic hotel now run by Fairmont. It exudes the grand character that the Lake Louise hotel lacks. Bonnie read that when it was built in 1888 (it has undergone many expansions since then), the architect visited the construction site and was appalled to see that his plan had been turned around, giving the expensive rooms a view of a nearby slope and the kitchens the best view of the mountains!l Perhaps a junior draftsman misdrew the north arrow? Or the contractor misread the plans. We enjoyed a drink in one of the lounges, facing a large crowd of wedding guests in tuxedos and long gowns. Very elegant. The smallest room, approximately 200 square feet, starts at $1,200 (CAD) a night or a ton of frequent flyer miles.

Strolling the town of Banff

Eats

Strolling Canmore and Dinner

Kananaskis Village and Spray Lakes

We decided to take a drive for the day through a less touristy area and chose Kananaskis Village as our destination. The ski village was built for the 1988 Olympics. Today it is a major ski area, and it once served as the site of a G8 Summit. As we strolled on the outskirts of the tourist village to see the views of the surrounding scenery, we came upon a Muslim woman in a headscarf attempting to get a photo of her husband and several teenage boys. Bonnie stepped in to take the photo and then asked where they were from. Calgary! We all laughed because it is only an hour away. But the dad volunteered that although the boys were born in Canada, he and his wife were born in Ethiopia.

The return trip of the loop was on gravel road. Nice dust-filled journey.