Banff

When Banff empties out

/ Greg / 1 Comment

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!

Lake Minnewanka
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Into the mountains with dad

/ Greg / 4 Comments

I’m not going to bury the lede on this… The five day, 2,200km road trip I took with my dad from Saskatoon to Calgary, then onto Banff, Lake Lousie and Jasper, and finally back to Saskatoon via Edmonton was one of the most fun things I’ve done in a long, long time. Every time I speak with my dad on the phone since he returned to New Brunswick, we end up talking about this trip and how much fun it was. Here’s the recap of an epic road trip, at least what I’m willing to share publicly. As with any good trip, there’s always a few things that need to respect the mantra “what happens on the road, stays on the road”

Calgary

When dad booked his flight from Bathurst, NB to visit me in Saskatoon in May, I immediately booked hotels for a mountain road trip so he could see the Rockies up close for the first time in his life. He arrived in Saskatoon, got acclimatized to my hometown for a couple of days, then we packed up the car and pointed it west. About seven hours later, we rolled into a rainy Calgary. First stop was at National on 17th, a great beer bar close to our hotel. Dad seems to be a fan of the pint I picked for him.

At National in Calgary

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Eating in Banff (aka: bison, bison, bison, elk)

/ Greg / Leave a comment

I generally eat pretty well wherever I go on vacation.   Some advance planning of the “can’t miss” places goes a long way toward making that happen.  When I was doing my advance scouting for Banff, it became apparent early on that there wouldn’t be enough days in the itinerary to try all of the places that I wanted to.    Here are the highlights of a week’s worth of delicious food and drink.

I violated a key travel rule – never return to the same restaurant twice on the same trip.  I broke that rule because the food was so good on the first visit to the Bear Street Tavern and there was a menu full of things I wanted to try.   On the first visit, they were running a Thursday night special on their bison short ribs.  I saw this menu item arrive to a salivating customer at the table next to us as I was considering my order and it swung my decision.  These were incredible – enormous, meaty and tender with crispy bits of BBQ sauce clinging to the edges.  The beer off to the side is Tree Brewery Hop Head IPA from Kelowna, BC.  Ignore the salad in the picture (I sure did):

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Views along the Bow River Parkway

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Although our Alberta road trip plans were cut short due to snow storms, we weren’t going to miss driving back from Lake Louise along the Bow River Parkway.  It’s a scenic, winding 2 lane road through the forest, well known for its mountain vistas and wildlife sightings.  This drive didn’t disappoint.

This is what most of the hour and a half drive looked like – forests and snow-capped mountain peaks.  We only saw maybe eight other cars for the length of the drive.  I took this picture standing in the middle of the road:

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An Alberta teaser

/ Greg / Leave a comment

Mountains, rivers, trees and lakes.  A steady diet of bison, elk and beef.  Million dollar views everywhere I turned.  A strong desire to stay longer in the mountains.  That’s the synopsis of my week in Banff and Lake Louise, Alberta.  I’m settling in tonight to sort through about a thousand photos (900 of which have a snow-capped mountain somewhere in the frame) and to start writing about this trip.   There will be more to come over the next week or two, but here’s a teaser of the beauty that permeated my spirit over the past week: