Vancouver - 18th Sep

Our last day in Vancouver and the end of our holiday.

The brilliant weather continued - cloudy, but warm and no rain. We walked downtown - less than 1 km from our apartment. More browsing; more shopping!

Then off to Gastown - a short walk from the downtown area. Of course, more shopping ensued - but that seems to have completed the lists.

Gastown Steam Clock sounds the quarter-hour

Gastown is the oldest part of Vancouver. It retains a charm from its part and so it teems with tourists and services for tourists. The old Steam Clock continues to tell the time and to sound the Westminster Chimes from its whistles on the quarter-hour. We found a good final lunch at the Flying Pig.

We headed north a few blocks and caught the trolley-bus to Stanley Park. This large park is an attractive space, with paths, playgrounds and bike paths. We had a walk around the seawall before bussing back towards downtown.

At Coal Harbour

We went as far as Coal Harbour. This is a busy marina with views across the harbour. We watched the ships and the frequent float-planes taking-off and landing. It was a good and relaxing end to our time In Vancouver.

Tomorrow is travel. Out to the airport, a three hour flight to LA, a seven hour wait and then the 16 hour haul back to Melbourne. The travel times are the price you pay for living so far away.

Vancouver Island - 17th Sep

We arranged a day tour to Victoria on Vancouver Island.

This is a large island off the coast and was the site of the first settlement. The names are designed to confuse. So, Vancouver isn't on Vancouver Island. The main city on the island is Victoria. But, it's Vancouver Island, not Victoria Island. By the way, Victoria is the capital of British Columbia (Vancouver, the largest city, isn't).

Apparently, the original settlement was at Victoria and this was quite prosperous. Later, Vancouver was established and grew to be larger than Victoria, particularly as businesses moved from Victoria to Vancouver. However, Vancouver Island only agreed to be part of British Columbia if Victoria was adopted as the capital (otherwise the people muttered about joining with the US).

It's a 45 minute ride to the terminal and then a 90 minute ferry ride to Vancouver Island. these are large ferries, as the island has about 700,000 inhabitants.



Butchart Gardens flowers

A major tourist attraction is Butchart Gardens, set in the countryside between the ferry terminal and Victoria. These are one of the world's major show gardens. The passion of one woman, they we developed from about 100 years ago, particularly in the area of an abandoned limestone quarry.

Apparently, flowers are regularly re-planted to ensure the best show given the season. It attracts over 1 million visitors annually and has over 85 full-time gardeners. It is still run by the family of the original couple that created the gardens.



In Butchart Gardens

The gardens are really very attractive, with various garden spaces and themes. It must be very busy at the height of the season, but as we were towards the end, the numbers were not an issue for us.

In Victoria's smallest shop

From there, we headed for Victoria and spent  a couple of hours walking the town. This involved walking down the main area, starting in the old Chinatown and heading down towards the area around the Fairmont Empress hotel. This actually means browsing and shopping. Bernadette managed to buy a shawl at the smallest shop we have ever seen (about 1.5m x 3m).

The main town is a compact area, with an attractive harbour outlook and the architecture reflects the prosperity of the town in the late 1800's. An impressive provincial assembly building is very evident and there is a striking heritage hotel nearby.

Provincial Assembly - Victoria

Returning is the reverse. Half and hour to the ferry terminal,  30 minutes waiting, 90 minutes on the ferry and 45 minutes back to our Vancouver hotel, to arrive at about 9:30 pm after a long day.

Our driver/guide was an interesting character. He was First Nations (means that he is a member of a local Indian tribe - in fact, one from the western part of Vancouver Island). He certainly had plenty of knowledge and he could certainly talk!

One fact - if there are roadside billboards, then the land adjacent is reservation land. Apparently, roadside billboards are banned, but the Indians are allowed to install them on their reservation land - and they are a source of income.

Rocky Mountaineer - 15 - 16th Sep

Deer in Banff

We were up early the next day to head for the railway station to board the Rocky Mountaineer. Driving there, we spotted a deer cheerfully munching on shrubs in a front yard – having searched on roads outside town for wildlife for three days.

The train is a well-organized affair. While it was late, boarding was efficient and we found ourselves in a car that was abut half-full. The trip takes you through the mountains, across the divide in BC and then through other mountains and alongside flowing rivers. There are tall pine forests and lots to see. An engineering highlight are the spiral tunnels, to looping tunnels under mountains  allow the track to descend with a reasonable grade.

At Banff station

A real Mountie (retired)

We are on the Canadian Pacific line here – the original line of the first transcontinental railway. We pass by where the final spike wad riven to complete the line. The line is very busy and we have lots of stops to allow very long freight trains to pass by. These freight trains can be over 3 km long.

The first day is long – we didn’t arrive at Kamloops, our overnight stop, until about 9pm. Overnight, the trains from Banff (ours) and from Jasper are combined, to double ote train to about 17 carriages.

The second day is shorter and there are fewer delays for passing freight trains. We are on the Canadian National line here, heading west. There is a Canadian Pacific line paralleling ours – often on the other side of a raging river – and all westbound traffic takes the CN line, with eastbound the CP line.

The Rocky Mountaineer

We run through the canyons of the Thompson and then the Fraser rivers, with the track hugging the wall of the canyon. In places, concrete or wood rooves protect the line from the danger of rock avalanches.

Nearer to Vancouver, we travel through temperate rainforest as the weather becomes bleaker, with a grey mist shrouding the steep hills that remain our companions, as the valleys widen.

We pull into the dedicated Rocky Mountaineer station at about 4:15pm, about 75 minutes early.

Banff - 12 - 14th Sep

Again, we faced a day of blue skies and warm temperatures. Our next destination was Banff, which is only about 60 km away. Rather than head off, we went out to Lake Louise again. Again, there were plenty of people here, but we wanted to have a look inside the Fairmont.

The inside is less impressive than the outside - at 10:30am there wasn't anywhere to have a sit-down coffee other than a cafeteria. OK - time to leave.

We headed off. However, we took the Bow Parkway, rather than the faster Trans-Canada Highway. This is a delightful road, tracking the Bow River The road is lined by tall fir forests for the most part, with peaks lining both sides of the valleys.

Banff is a town inside the National Park, but is much larger than Lake Louise or Jasper. It has about 5000 inhabitants. So it has a downtown, multiple malls, many restaurants and clothing stores In fact, there are pressures because Parks Canada don't want the town to get any bigger. For many years, only "eligible residents" are able to live here - to be eligible you have to work in the town or the park or own a business here that requires your day-to-day attention.

We found a good place for lunch (Coyote Deli), before heading off to our accommodation. We also made a trip to the Safeway for supplies, as our apartment allows us to cook dinner. It was a relatively relaxed day - we were all feeling the weariness of the walk the day before. The heat of the day added to this - we even enjoyed a swim in the pool at our resort.

View from Sulphur Mountain over Banff

The next day (Friday) brought the same weather - blue skies and warm weather. We had a slow start and then headed out to the Banff Gondola.

The Gondola takes you high up to the peak of Sulphur Mountain, were you get a great view of the peaks around and Banff in the valley below.

Back to town for a Mexican lunch, then off to Lake Minnewanka (pronounced "mini-wonka"). This a large lake - it started small, but various dams up to 1941 progressively increased the size of the lake and made it a source of hydro-power.

Devil's Gap - end of Minnewanka and end of the Rockies

We took a cruise of about 75 minutes on the lake. It was a good cruise, but not as scenic as that on Lake Maligne. Following this we continued on to Lake Jack, hoping to spot some wildlife. No wildlife, mainly because the places we found were clearly popular spots for picnics and even swimming for locals (mainly young people) on a late Friday afternoon.

Back to Banff to relax and then have a drink.

On our last day in Banff, we caught up with the last few things we wanted to do. We headed out to an area called Cave and Basin. This is what it says – it is a cave that was initially found by three railway workers and which contained a hot mineral spring pool and a subsequent pool or basin that was created to allow people to “take the waters”. The springs bubble up through cracks from far below Sulphur Mountain. Initial disputes over the ownership of the springs and the value seen in such springs led the government to take over the area and create Canada’s first National Park (the third in the world). Later development included a 45m pool, then the largest in Canada. You can’t swim here now, but the area is preserved as a museum of the first park. There is also a small and very new museum detailing the internment near here of European migrants as enemy aliens in WW1.

After a great lunch at Saltlik, we visited the local Whyte Museum of the Rockies, which has excellent displays on the history and culture of the Rockies.

Bachelorette Party at Banff

We dropped our hire car at the Banff Springs Hotel and had a drink on the terrace. This large pile is one of the great railway hotels, built to encourage tourism in the 1920’s. It is built in a baronial style, with a great view down the Bow Valley from the terrace.

More Banff party girls

Back at our apartment, we found the place jumping. There were at least four groups of women’s bachelorette parties, as well as a number of other groups of women and also a couple of groups of men. They seemed to come here for the weekend – from places east like Calgary and Red Deer.

Lake Louise - 11th Sep

Our hotel is in Lake Louise Village, which is about 3 km from Lake Louise itself. The village is small, but it has many visitors in summer and winter.

Lake Louise

We headed out to Lake Louise. This is a very attractive glacier fed lake, with an arc of high glacier-coated peaks around three sides of the lake. The iconic Fairmont Lake Louise hotel is at the open end of the arc.

It's all really attractive and there are plenty of people around even though the peak season has passed.

While all the photos show the Fairmont hotel as beautiful, these pictures are mostly when it is draped in snow - in fact, it's actually an unimpressive concrete file. However, this doesn't take away from the beauty of the lake and its surrounds - glacier coated peaks and green fir forests on the mountain flanks.

Moraine Lake

Moraine Lake is another attractive spot about 12 km away, and equally popular. It's another turquoise lake with surrounding mountains coated in glaciers and, lower down, green forests.

Everything is close here - we headed back to the village for lunch at a table by the local river.

The afternoon was exercise time. We drove back to Lake Louise and took the hiking trail to Lake Agnes. This is a 3.4 km track which rises about 400m above Lake Louise, with the track continually rising through the forest. The prize at the end is Lake Agnes and its Teahouse. Lake Agnes is a small and beautiful glacier fed lake, as is Mirror Lake a little distance below it.

View from Lake Agnes Teahouse

The teahouse is perched on a ledge, with a great view to the head of Lake Louise and the Fairmont Hotel, as well as the land around for miles. They actually serve a great cup of tea, along with scones or chocolate cake, and you feel it is so much more worthwhile after the hike up the mountain. The hike filled our afternoon.

We had a pre-dinner drink, a good meal at the nearby pub and headed for an early night after the labours of the day.

Icefields Parkway - 10th Sep

The Icefields Parkway links Jasper and Lake Louise in a north-south route of 230 km. It was developed in the 1930's as a Depression project to create work, as north-south commerce was never important in the Rockies (everything focussed on east-west links - road and rail). So, it was developed for tourists and it remains a tourist road; commercial traffic isn't allowed.

We armed ourselves with a parks pass, an electronic route guidance device (called GyPSy) and picnic provisions.

Athabasca Falls

Simply put, the Icefields Parkway is claimed to be one of the most attractive roads in the world - it certainly is. It's a very good road and the 90 km/h speed limit encourages you to take your time.

There are some many places to pull over or to call in to see another site - falls, views, lakes, glaciers, stunning peaks and much more. Chains of high peaks flank both sides of the road, with many of those on the left (western) side hosting glaciers.

We stopped at the Icefields Centre to take a tour on the Athabasca Glacier, which is fed by the massive Columbia Icefield that

On Athabasca Glacier

you can see coating peaks like icing. A transport bus takes you up the side of the glacier and you transfer to a large 4WD bus designed to take you out onto the glacier itself. So, you exit the bus and spend about 20 minutes walking around a large section of the glacier surface that has been graded flat and is considered safe. It isn't quite the natural glacier, but you are there, you see the melt-water flowing about and you and look further up the glacier area. It's one of those experiences that you have to do and, realistically, it is worthwhile.

Following a picnic lunch at a nice spot by the river, we continued on. More glaciers, more peaks and more lakes followed. This is not to dismiss the views lightly - the whole experience is superb. In some cases, such as Lake Peyto, you walk into a brilliant lake and distant views down the valley.

Lake Peyto

The whole experience was a great day, enhanced by simply magical weather with cloudless skies and temperatures in the low 20's.

We rolled into Lake Louise village, which is quite small, and found our hotel.

Jasper - 9th Sep

Jasper is set within Jasper National Park. Very popular now, it was only explored and started to become known as a destination from about 1908.

We collected pasties from the bakery, got park passes and collected our hire car. We also hired a smart little unit that senses where you are and offers commentary as you go.

At Maligne Canyon

We decided to head for Maligne Lake, 40 km from Jasper. On the way you come to Maligne Canyon, a deep (50m) and very narrow (a few metres) gorge cut by the Maligne River. It's all a bit strange, as more water flow out of the canyon than flows in - other water has seeped through underground caverns to add to the volume.

Further on, you come to Medicine Lake. This seems quite large, but it is full in summer and dries up as winter comes. In fact, water from the lake is seeping into the underground stream system and coming out at Maligne Canyon and elsewhere. Inflows in summer are more than the seepage through many small sinkholes, so the lake fills. As the inflows decrease towards winter, the lake empties.

Spirit Island on Maligne Lake

Further on, we came to Maligne Lake. This large lake (22km long) is fed by glacial streams, so is very cold. We took a cruise. The blue lake is surrounded by peaks, which crowd in t0wards the further end. There you disembark, so that everyone can furiously photograph a small pine-covered island (Spirit Island) with a view to the surrounding peaks and glaciers (called the Hall of the Gods). Certainly hyped, but also a great view.

Coming back, we called into Jasper Park lodge just before getting back to Jasper to see how the wealthy enjoy the area. This is a Fairmont hotel, set around a couple of small lakes, with an attached golf course. The whole style is of lots of small cabins around a "hunting lodge". It was actually quite attractive and we enjoyed an drink looking over the lake.

Bull Elk

On the way out, we saw a bull moose and a female and calf getting away from the bull. We also quickly glimpsed a deer in the trees, so we saw some wildlife for the day.

Our accommodation has a good deck, so we got the necessary provisions and had a meal on the patio.