Lake Louise

Today we wake to a bright sunny day - perfect for our drive through the Rockies to Lake Louise - about a 2 hour drive. Mary is not comfortable sitting in what should be the drivers seat - but with no steering wheel. I go okay with the left hand drive - especially as the roads are so good - dual carriage way, smooth wide roads and plenty of room on either side. They don’t have little Utes in Canada, most of the vehicles are huge utes, almost trucks - the F350 Fords are almost the smallest.

We had to pay $8.50 each [seniors] to drive into the Banff National park - not bad when you see how well kept it is. The roadside toll house was easy to negotiate.

Signs as we approached Lake Louise said we should park 5 kms out and get the shuttle bus - I was confident the “Lucky Pierre” would be okay. We gingerly drove passed marshals like we knew what we were doing and went to the closest car park but nothing was available then Mary said, lets do one more lap - sure enough a spot right near the Lake.

The colour of the Lake is a vivid turquoise blue - just brilliant. People everywhere taking photos, but if you take a little walk there are plenty more spots to get good photos. We took heaps. We also went for a good stroll around the edge of the lake - was a hot day - high 20’s but very pleasant. A smoothy for lunch from the Fairmont Chateau - life is good.

I had watched a couple of Youtube videos and most recommended a visit to Lake Moraine. A drive up the mountain even further and luckily again we found spaces left in the car park. This is another blue lake with huge mountains on every side. There is a large rock pile you can climb to get a better view. Interestingly, if you walk in groups of less than 4 you can be fined, because you a risking being attacked by Grizzly Bears !!!!

Next stop was across the road from Lake Louise at the ski lodge. Here I planned to go up on the Chair lift [with dangling legs] and try to spot a bear. It was getting a bit late in the day [around 4pm] and getting colder but I insisted we go in the open chair. Very happy, it was just what I wanted and we did see a large grizzly bear, you know they can eat around 200,000 berries in a day !!

To warm up we called in at the ski lodge bar for beer and wine. Mary had a pulled pork sandwich [roll] and I had ribs - great. For fun Mary ordered a Green [verde] Caesar - with celery salt, and the works - made her mouth hot with the jalapeno and salami - but she preferred it to the red Caesar.

On the way home we called into Banff for a coffee and a look around before tomorrow’s visit - what a picturesque place. Getting used of the driving and so the drive home was easy - back again on the same road tomorrow - should be great.

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