It's been Deb's childhood dream to go to Banff in Canada since she was a little girl. This was the year, as she was no longer interested in any other vacation options until we had seen Banff. We planned the trip a few days apart from seeing my brothers, who live in southern Idaho. So, we drove seven hours south to see them, and then the very next week after selling at two markets, we drove seven hours north into Canada.
The agent at the border did everything but ask my shoe size. He might have had that one already as he scanned the passport. Who knows what information they get when they do that?
We stopped a few times along the way and were scheduled to take the gondola up the Sulfur Mountain at three o’clock. We lost an hour to the time zone when we crossed the border, so that was a problem. We took the two-lane shortcut over the mountains instead of around the mountains on the nice four-lane highway. There were a lot of twists and turns, and I don't think we saved any time, especially when we were stuck behind slow-moving traffic.
We had a three o'clock appointment to ride up Sulfur Mountain gondola. We made our appointment with five minutes to spare. One of us wanted to park at the bottom of the hill and take the bus up. I'm glad she didn't listen to me because we would have been late. I think the appointment times were more guidelines than hard and fast rules anyway. The gondola went up fast. Eight minutes from bottom to top. It held only four people, and since there were two in the one car, they needed two more. Deb and I were able to skip about eight people because we were a group of two, and all the other groups had three or four. Nice.
It took us to a visitor's center up on the top of the mountain.
So, I went around the visitor’s center and then spied out the window. There was yet another peak. Deb said she wanted to do a walk while we were up there. I wondered if that was it. It looked steep, but had wooden stairs going up to it. When she caught up to me, she said that was it. You can't see the top from the bottom when you get close to it. We climbed to the next level, thinking that was the top of the mountain, but no, there was another level and then another level. We climbed about nine levels before we finally made the 368 steps to the top. The view was amazing. You could see in all directions from up there. Mountains and more mountains. It was breathtaking.
After that, we checked into the hotel. We stayed in Canmore because it's less than half the price to stay there. Deb called our daughter-in-law. I might have crashed on the bed for a few minutes. I was really tired. We went out to dinner at an Italian place a few buildings down from the hotel. We had checked the menu before we went to see if there was something Deb could eat. When we arrived, they had changed the menu, and those items were no longer offered. She had spaghetti and meatballs without the meatballs and cheese. We had to get her some chicken strips on the drive to the hotel so she would have some protein in her.
The next day, we woke to an alarm. I know that isn't a vacation thing to do usually, but it is with our vacations. We ate breakfast at the hotel. We had to pay for it, but it wasn't bad. We also get a 25% discount because we're Americans. (Exchange rate)
We headed out to the meeting place where we were supposed to get our tour. Deb checked the tickets, and her heart sunk. “The ticket says eight o'clock.” It was eight-thirty at the time. Her text said eight-fifty.
“So, we missed the tour?” I asked. Now my heart sunk.
“They aren't here.” The parking lot was full of people standing around waiting for their tour vans and buses to arrive.
“Wait, that one over there has the name of our tour company on it.” It turns out that wasn't our van, but our van was on the way. We could breathe again.
Angel was our driver, and he made the trip fun. We went to Lake Louise. It is named after Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria. Louise married the Governor General of Canada in the 1800s. There is an upper and lower Victoria Glaciers that feeds the lake and gives it a greenish color. There were a lot of people there, and getting a picture without them in it was difficult.
Our next stop was Moraine Lake. It has a huge rock pile in front of it that was left by a glacier. It’s called the rock pile. Eighty-something feet tall, the only way to get up it is a narrow, two-way path with 265 jagged, uneven steps.
Deb asked if I wanted to climb it. I said, “No.”
“Great, let's go. “This one was over two hundred steps on top of over three hundred steps we did the day before, not to mention all of the walking, besides the steps, we had done the last few days. The view from up there was spectacular. The green water changes to a darker turquoise color the higher up you climb.
We went to town next and had two hours there. Angel, our driver, listed off all of the good restaurants in town that we could try.
Banff itself is nothing more than a tourist trap in my opinion. We didn't eat at one of those fancy restaurants that Angel mentioned. Instead, we went into the mall's food court. That didn't work. They had just had a four-hour power outage and couldn't take credit cards, and wouldn't take American dollars. Deb and I went into the Dollar Store and bought some candy to eat. I know, bad idea. It wasn't a lot of candy, though. We found another couple from the van in the dollar store. They had bought tuna salad in a can. They sat at the next table and ate. The others in the van went to restaurants. We circled town a couple of times because we didn't go to a sit-down restaurant and had lots of extra time. Maybe too much in my opinion. We finally met back at the van. The road to the van was being worked on, and there were dust clouds to walk through to get there.
There was Bow Falls right next to town that we went to. Then we went out to Lake Minnewanka. It's a deep lake and even has a town at the bottom of it. Minnewanka Landing is seven blocks long and has a hotel, several restaurants, and lots of summer homes. The only way to see it is with scuba gear. It was sunk in 1941 when they built the dam. I guess you shouldn't build too close to the water. They kept building up the dam, and the town was covered, so it wasn't a surprise. It's Banff's largest lake. We saw a herd of mountain goats on our way into the lake and lots of elk on our way out. I noticed that Angel had a canister of something hanging from his belt in a pouch. “Is that bear spray?” I asked. It was. He never goes into the forest without it.
We ate at Boston Pizza that night.
The next morning, we were in no real hurry because we only had a three-hour drive to the next town. I'm just going to say this out loud. Canada's road signs aren't the greatest. We missed our turn, and we missed the next turn also. We aren't talking a city block or two; we are talking major highways. It ended up costing us an hour and a half in travel time, and we were almost out of gas when we drove into Golden. We didn't fill up because Canadian gas is so much more expensive than American gas, but we just put enough in to get us across the border the next day. It didn't work; we were down to the last little bit again and had to put a little more in. We'll see if it was enough in the morning.
We thought the longer route would at least be flatter, but it was steeper, so there was no benefit in going that way.
We drove into the town of Kimberly. It's supposed to be a Bavarian Village, but it didn't hold a candle to Leavenworth. We went to the museum. The lady behind the desk, instead of just taking our money and letting us wander, gave us the grand tour of the place. (All of two rooms) It was a mining town, but the mine played out back in 2001.
The fun part of town was the giant cuckoo clock. You put a coin in, and the door opens, and Hans comes out and yodels. We asked at a store where the clock was. We had walked past the back of it, and when they pointed at the narrow, white two-story building, we felt kinda silly. We didn't have a dollar (loonie) to put in the thing. We went up the street to a bookstore and traded the man there a US dollar for a Canadian one. While I was there, I asked if he had any books by Clark or Deb Graham. For some reason, he didn't, so I gave him one of my cards.
When we came back down to put the coin in, it wanted two dollars. (toonie) instead of one. So we went to the closest store, an auto parts store. Deb told the lady she didn't have enough Canadian money as she had only a dollar seventy-five. The lady told her that it was enough and gave her a toonie. We then went over and stuck the coin in the slot and watched as Hans came out to yodel.
There is a restaurant that has outdoor seating right next to the cuckoo clock. I don't think they appreciated the yodeling as much as we did. It went on for longer than I expected. Deb heard one lady ask, “How often does this happen?”
It might have been worth the side trip just for that.
Our next stop was the museum in Cranbrook. It had different pricing depending on how involved you wanted to get. The most expensive was the guided tour through the railroad cars and the history of Cranbrook. I settled for the least expensive and went to a railroad layout and played with the model trains. If you pushed this button, which looked like an old doorbell, then this train would go. Another button controlled the next train. They would go one time around and then stop. Since the building was very long, I was able to push all the buttons down the row and get all the trains running for a few minutes. That was the larger-scale train, like a Lionel size. The train on the other side of the room was HO gauge and had only one button. Still, I enjoyed it. It made me miss my train set that I haven't had in decades.
Went to Greek for dinner. We were both surprised that it was fast food. It was good, but they messed up a lot of orders, including Deb's. I had to wait for hers to get redone, and mine was getting cold. We then went back to the hotel room we had checked into previously.
The next morning, we headed out to Fort Steele. It was a fort built to protect the local area, and a small town built up around it. When the railroad didn’t go through, and the Indian problems were settled, the town was mostly abandoned. They have restored a lot of the town and the fort area now.
It has a working tin smith shop, bakery, candy store, and theater.
Afterward, we had a nice, relaxing three-hour drive home.
You can also read Novels of North Idaho by me
and cruise trips by my wife
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