Banff National Park is more famous than Jasper, apparently, and we knew it would be busy in August when we were there, because it's such a great time of year to go. We tend to be rather crowd-averse, so we didn't plan a ton of sightseeing at the busiest places or times, which also meant we missed some stuff that would probably have been great. I would love to go back sometime and see more of the park, and maybe do more hiking (once we don't have a bunch of little kids…but will that time ever come? It seems unlikely). Anyway, what we did see was wonderful!
We rode the gondola at the Lake Louise ski resort one morning. I knew that would be a hit because my children love trams and ski lifts!
Teddy was interested in the workings of the pulleys and cables, as all little boys are
Ziggy called this lift the "up-a-down" as he watched the little gondolas go up and down the mountain, and he was pleased when we got to ride in one ourselves. We were pleased that it was a closed gondola with a floor and windows, since he took his shoes off multiple times and wanted to lean over the seat and look at everything. I have been on my share of ski lifts with wiggly babies and it is always VERY stressful (though thankfully we've never dropped a baby yet. Gloves, yes.), so a closed car was a blessing. Some of the bigger kids rode in an open one, though, and that was great too.
At one point Sam was commenting on the way we went "bump-bump-bump" every time the gondola went past one of the lift poles. And Ziggy, who was VERY fascinated with the big water bucket at the water park a couple months ago, and still talks nonstop about how that bucket went "dump-dump-dump"—apparently thought Sam had said "dump-dump-dump." And that led to Ziggy pointing at all the empty gondolas we passed and saying very sadly "Dump-dump. Dump out." We finally realized he thought THE PEOPLE had been dumped out of those gondolas and that's why they were empty. And we wondered if he was just assuming we, too, would have to take our turn being "dump-dump-dump"ed when we got to the top? He accepted it quite philosophically, if so. Poor little lamb.
There's Lake Louise at the top of the picture! It's too far away to see well here. You will see it better later.
We rode up over millions of wildflowers. Trying to find ways to show how pretty and plentiful wildflowers are from afar is the bane of my photographic existence. They always look so unimpressive, just little dots, in a photograph. But they were beautiful!
Ah, there's a better view of Lake Louise. Even from here, you can see how turquoise it is.
Teddy, sad and offended about something
The people that consented to have their pictures taken
Glaciers! Such shelf-y ones!
You see Teddy has recovered from his momentary offendedness, whatever it was. I'm not sure what Malachi's expression means, however. They are sitting together in this chair because they both have the favorite color green. That makes perfect sense, right?
The trip down in the gondola. Such glee!
More glee. One-sided this time.
The town of Banff is forty minutes or so from Lake Louise. We drove down past this slanty mountain to see it.
There were even MORE daisies all along the way by the roadside. I broke my resolution to stop trying to take pictures of them. There were just so many! I couldn't help myself!
Banff is a nice little town—crowded (at least it was when we were there) but cute. We got ice cream at two different places, and tried something a couple people had recommended called a "beaver tail" which was like a sort of scone with toppings on it. It was good, but…well, I don't wish to boast, but we do rather frequently make very good scones (or fry bread, if you prefer) at home so it wasn't revelatory or anything. Of course, you have to understand, when there are ten of us trying something, it results in a VERY SMALL portion for each person, so maybe it would be better if one could just gobble the whole thing up oneself.
The mountains in Banff (I'm referring to the park itself now, not the town) are, like Jasper's, amazing. It's interesting just how MANY types and shapes of mountain there are.
One afternoon/evening Sam and I left the children at the rental house and went on a bus tour that took us to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. [What, by the way, dictates whether one puts the name before the lake, or the lake before the name? Why not Louise Lake? Or Lake Moraine? It all seems rather arbitrary.] [You knew I'd end up looking it up, didn't you? Here are the not-very-satisfactory answers I found.]
It was nice not to have to worry about parking, and for Sam to be able to look around at the scenery all he wanted to, since he's always having to drive and pay attention to the road!
We saw this handsome elk.
It had been pouring rain ALL DAY, but the sun came out as we stopped for a quick look out over the Bow River, and it was lovely.
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| [Dominik92 at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)] |
The color of the lake really is amazing. Hard to capture on camera.
People were out rowing on the lake, which looked fun. Look at those low clouds above the glaciers!
As we walked around admiring the lake, we saw a cloud descending and a gentle little sprinkle of rain started to fall. And then we we heard a ROAR to one side and saw a dark sheet of cloud heading straight for us. You could hear the downpour as it raced through the trees, across the path, and then onto the lake. It was so interesting, because on the surface of the water we could see a clear line of demarcation between the two intensities of rainfall as the heavy rain approached. And the sound was scary, like the sound of a thousand-man army running right for us! There was really nowhere to go, so we just stayed and watched it and prepared to get wet. And we DID get wet. Quite wet.
We made it back onto the bus eventually (did I mention our bus tour only had four people on it? And that the other couple was from Utah…our very city…our very neighborhood…living not two miles away from us?? We didn't know them personally, but it was a very strange coincidence all the same) and headed up to Moraine Lake, which was my favorite place of all. Just LOOK at it! I had read that it is so crowded at peak season, you basically can't get up there at all—the parking lot is constantly full and they close the road to traffic. It was supposed to be better in the evening, which is part of why we were even taking this bus tour.
It was still raining very hard by this time, and continued to for most of the rest of the evening, so we were a little sad not to be able to see all the mountains around. But this day did have the first real rain we'd seen yet, and it had been in the forecast, and we'd known our good luck couldn't last forever! So we weren't too upset about it. And the good thing was, the rain kept all the hordes of people away, so we had the place nearly to ourselves once we got there! I loved that. It also made it easier that we weren't dragging Ziggy and a bunch of other wet little children along with us. Anyway, the rain did NOT dim the turquoise color of Moraine Lake! I am calling them both turquoise, but you can kind of see from the pictures—Lake Louise is much more greenish, and Moraine Lake much more bluish along the turquoise spectrum!
Here is the magnificent view of Moraine Lake through rain and cloud cover.
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| By WhyDon'tWeZJCDJ - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80641685 |
THESE are the peaks that were hiding behind those clouds, as captured by someone else on another day, obviously.
Rain or not, this is one of the loveliest places I've ever been! It seems like such a place CAN'T be real. And certainly CAN'T have just happened by chance. Which, of course, I don't think it DID. I am so grateful to Heavenly Father for making this beautiful, beautiful part of the world!
I posted this picture on Instagram and a friend said "My favorite part was how your shoes matched the water in that one picture," and I had no idea what she was talking about. But then I looked back at the photos and saw that she was right! My shoes DO match perfectly. How clever of me.
Wow! Those views are surreal. I’m pretty much convinced I’ll need extend my drive to see these views.
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