We finally made it to Banff…8 days after we left home. What a beautiful place!! But I get ahead of myself. We got up this morning, packed, loaded the car, and were on the road by 9:00 am. Rather than take the more direct route; i.e. the boring freeway, we decided to take the scenic route…a system of 2 lane roads called the Cowboy Trail. We had a map, but every time we turned on the navigator, it kept trying to direct us back to the freeway. As we ignored its directions, it kept saying “recalculating” and then it would try to take us back to the main roads again…how boring.
We made our way following the map, and the navigator finally quit trying to redirect us and let us pick our way...first Hyway 5, then Hyway 6, then Hyway 3, then Route 561, then Hyway 40 to Route 1 into Banff. Six hours...and many lakes, farms, small towns, a mountain pass with snow AND big horn sheep on the side of the road...and we arrived. What a gorgeous drive. We stopped and took many pictures, but it is hard to capture the majesty of the mountains and lakes with a small camera.
When we arrived at our hotel in Banff, it was another spectacular sight. It is literally a castle built into the side of a mountain. We have a gorgeous view from our room as we look down on a raging river and up at several snow-capped mountain peaks.
After renewing several friendships with ING people during a welcoming reception we had a wonderful dinner. The before dinner activity was a chance to hold and have your picture taaken with several endangered birds. One was a blind golden eagle. Another that I held was a great horned owl. It was a fun thing to do. The birds were so beautiful. The dinner was set up with stations of different kinds of food and you could wander and have some of whatever you wanted. I had bites of lamb, salmon (which was barbecued and sweet and was called indian candy) Caribou, moose liver pate', and smoked salmon. It was delicious.
After dinner we went for a walk with some friends and hiked down to Bow Falls where we came upon two beautiful elk grazing right next to the trail. Unfortunately our camera had no battery left and we missed getting any pictures of them. We waited until lthey were done eating and moved on because they were there first and their antlers were bigger than ours. When we got back to the hotel the rest of our group went into the bar to finish celebrating the evening, and Dan and I came to our room to settle in for the night. Dan has meetings in the morning and we will have tons of story to add tomorrow night.
Well that is our story for the today, my dears.
Everyone have a good night.
From the ma and pa.
The Bits: August
5 years ago
