Banff

The flight has been pretty relaxed but late, so we arrived at 0:15 local time at the hotel (it's -2 hrs from Montreal). So we just freshened up a bit and went to sleep because we needed to pick up the rental car at 07:30 in the morning.
This went pretty smooth and the way from Calgary to Canmore (the last town before the National Park) was absolutely stunning with the Canadian Rockies slowly building up in front of us, filling out the entire view. Our first stop was in Canmore where we had planned to do a little hike but the trail was unfortunately closed due to maintenance so we decided to continue on to Banff. Right after entering the town we saw a large group of female elk grazing next to the road. A promising start to our wildlife spotting goals :)
After a short stop in town for a resupply and information on the hikes around we made a small and flat loop trail. Afterwards we drove to a lookout with a great view of the Fairmont Hotel, standing huge between the mountains on a cliff. The main hike we decided on for today is up to Sulphur Mountain where also a gondola goes up. The hike was pretty good thanks to a well maintained trail with switchbacks. The 5.8 km and 600 metres altitude still took us about 2 hours but the views were fabulous all over the valleys. The center on top offered lots of useful and interesting information on the area. I chuckled at the fact that they called it the "Switzerland of North America". And you could really see some similarities 😅
After we walked back down we were in for a treat because there are Hot Springs at the bottom where we spent an hour getting soaked. For the evening there wasn't much planned so we just walked a bit around in Banff, watched the sunset and went shopping (I've been looking for Smartwool hiking socks for a while!). The view of the town with the mountain backdrop and reflections were absolutely breathtaking 😍Leggi altro