Day 2 in Banff (technically Canmore). I woke up naturally at 5am ready to start the day. Noelle followed at 6:30, and the kids at 7:30 after 15 minutes of harassment and threats. I originally planned to leave at 6am to try to fit the full day in, but it’s always overly optimistic with the 3 sleeping beauties that I travel with.
Noelle made some bacon for breakfast. Quick question – is all bacon in Canada called canadian bacon? I’m going to assume so. The Canadian bacon (that looked and tasted very similar to standard American bacon) was the perfect way to get going. The girls slowly ate their breakfasts and slowly got ready and slowly did their hair and added in a few breaks to do some dance videos and I had to resort to more threats and yelling to get them ready to go. We made some ham and peanut butter sandwiches so we could have a nice picnic on the road and left 2.5 hours after I originally planned…
We drove over to a trailhead called Johnston Canyon Trail. When we arrived, I was a little confused because there was a hotel (Johnston Canyon Hotel) there where the trailhead clearly started and signs saying $15 a day for parking. Something didn’t feel right to me since there were only like 15 spots, and almost all were empty even though this should be a fairly popular hike, so I jumped back on the road and found the actual free parking that was just around the corner. Nice try Johnston Canyon hotel!
Victoria was a little grumpy again since she was cold (it was in the 40’s) and wanted to be left in the car, but Hodgson’s are not car allowed to be car waiters when there’s a hike to be had so we started up the trail. The trail was a great one. For long portions of it, they bolted a bridge-like walkway to the side of the canyon wall with the river below it, so you’re walking elevated above the river. The hike was fairly flat with a few steep places that would get your blood pumping. We all took coats off about 1/3 of the way through the trail. The river was a good one for gawking – crystal clear water with small waterfalls all along the way.
The two highlights of the trail were a set of larger water falls. One of them you go through a little cave to get a close up view of the water fall. Overall the hike was fun and variety of water falls was nice, but not the most epic things you’ve ever seen.
Lower Falls
Upper Falls
The hike back was much easier than the hike up. We spotted people taking off their coats at the example same place where we took ours off (at the end of the one steep section). We did have to backtrack once where the trail back veered off to a different trail. It might have reconnected with the main trail at some point, but we didn’t want to take that risk. We were starved by the end of it, and it was still a little chilly out, so we ate our picnic lunch in the cars. Noelle has Victoria convinced that there are bears everywhere just waiting for us to pull out our sandwiches before they attack, so she felt safer in the car also.
I had originally planned for us to do a second hike after this one at Tunnel Mountain Trail that looked like it had beautiful view of the landscape. The girls were a little whiny with the thought of a second hike, but I bribed them with the offer of lululemon if they could do it without complaining and they were very excited about the hike all of a sudden. As we were driving over there, I did the math on the schedule and realized we probably couldn’t fit it in with the reservations we have later, so we pivoted to a visit downtown Banff instead.
I parked us in the free parking area and we hiked through the residential area into the main downtown of the city to the real destination the girls were interested in – the lululemon they were promised. I told them they could get something if they promised to never complain about another hike again the rest of the trip. We’ll see if that works. Lydia said that the lululemon’s in Canada were supposed to be much cheaper than in America. If that’s true, we should probably stop shopping at the ones in America since it ain’t cheap in Canada either.
The city of Banff is a beautiful little town and it’s nestled between mountains on multiple sides. It’s like they designed the city streets to cool mountain views as you walk down them. We did a little more touristy shopping in Banff to get t-shirts and a Christmas ornament then hiked back to the car. We got a little lost when I convinced the family I knew exactly how to get back and could do it by memory. It did give us a chance to checkout their elementary school that was still in session. The kids here were at recess in a field and were all playing hockey with sticks and balls.
Our pathing also took us by a deer that we assumed was one of Santa’s reindeer that was doing some travelling. I thought it was Vixen, but the girls thought it was Dasher (since it dashed away). Noelle and the girls walked over to take a picture in front of the Banff sign and I grabbed the car and picked them up.
We drove back to the airbnb to get ready for the second half of the day. Our dinner reservations are at a nice restaurant where you’re supposed to dress fancy, but we didn’t have enough room in the carryon’s for fancy clothes, but we all wore the nicest thing we had, which was new lululemon for the girls.
We left there and drove over to the parking for the Banff gondola. They HIGHLY suggest you park in town and take the shuttle here since parking was limited (full was the term the signs used), but we didn’t have enough time to do all that so I just drove straight there and crossed my fingers that we could find a spot. My worries were overblown and there were several spots.
We had reservations for 3:30 pm to take one of the gondolas up. We grabbed a little Starbucks that was conveniently right there, queued up at exactly the right time, and jumped into the 4 seater gondola.
The facilities at the top of the gondola were very impressive. It was a 4 level building that had a 360 viewing deck of the epic mountain scenery in all directions, an area that had several high-tech interactive displays/games that the kids could do, a small movie room to see a 6 minute hype video of people doing intense outdoors things, and 2 different restaurants on the 3rd level. It actually started showing while we were on the viewing deck and the girls acted like they were freezing to death so we did the inside stuff.
The other thing they had that was a highlight to me was a very nice hike up a board walk up to the highest part of the mountain. The views of the landscape and city far below were just incredible. You had to resist taking a billion pictures since everywhere you looked look like it was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. I tried to just pause and enjoy that moment on top of the world. I looked at my watch and we were 10 minutes from our dinner reservation time and yelled for the family to run down quickly!
We had dinner at the Sky Bistro, a five star restaurant with five star views of the mountains. I told them it was our anniversary (still a week away, but close enough) and they brought us some champagne. The food and drinks were all excellent, especially considering all food and chef’s have to be gondola’d up. I had a bison steak and a maple syrup infused/smoked old fashioned and Noelle had the short rib.
We drove back home with a little time to spare and the girls have been begging to go swimming in the pool, so they put on their bathing suits and we went down. Pool was indoors and heated, and it had probably the best slide i’ve ever seen on a hotel pool. They went down that slide over and over the entire time we were there.
I was falling sleep in my chair watching them and eventually went back up after 20 minutes and fell asleep at ~9pm. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to make it all the way through this trip at my advanced age – one day, one step at a time!