Labour Day 2020 started out as a rainy day so our plans were fairly modest. My wife and I had a lovely breakfast just outside the Banff townsite and over huevos rancheros decided on a drive to Canmore to visit an independent bookstore – a decision that both provided us our first chance to see snow this season on the highway into town and also helped me get an early jump on my xmas shopping. After a lazy middle of the day at our hotel, I got a bit restless. The clouds cleared, the temperatures rose and the town of Banff emptied out as most people headed home for a return to jobs and for the start of the school year.

There aren’t many lovely summer-like days in this part of the world where you get the sights mostly to yourself, so I took the opportunity to head to Lake Minnewanka. I had no plans other than to simply spend some time at the edge of the water. No plans never looked so good!

Normally this place would be jammed with cars and people, but aside from a small group taking wedding photos and a small scattering of others, the park was quiet.

I settled myself on a rocky beach and let this scene wash over me. I felt beyond fortunate that this stunning natural beauty is a reasonably short 7.5 hour drive from my home and that in a year where I wasn’t sure I’d get away for a proper vacation, I got to have this experience.

I did a short hike around one small section of the lake, mostly so I could get a better view of a couple of mountains that stretched out in a different direction. I think the walk was well worth it!

While 2020 hasn’t let me travel anywhere near as much or as far as I desired, I was not going to give up on a favourite travel ritual of dunking my foot in any body of water I come across. Normally reserved for far away oceans, this has been a year of bringing this ritual to a few local lakes. Each time I do this it is with the hope that I can experience this again while looking out over a large body of water in some far-off foreign land.

I returned to my previous spot on the beach and sat down again, not yet ready to let go of the peace and quiet and this exquisite view of Mount Girouard. Of my limited travels this past year, this is probably the place and moment that most felt like I was away from it all… I sat here for quite some time not wanting that feeling to end.

But as with everything, that moment did have to end, and I had a dinner date back in Banff. But first, I parked the car in the centre of town, and experienced something I hadn’t on my previous visits to Banff – a deserted Banff Avenue.

While my dinner date that night was a socially distanced room service order in the company of my wife, I did have this exceptional view from our room. I’d normally never order hotel room service on vacation, but for this view and on account of 2020, I made an exception on our last night in Banff. I think it worked out well to cap three days in one of my favourite places in the world.