Canadian Rockies – Fri 3 & Sat 4 July

Given how we were feeling after sleeping in at Glacier National Park, rather than heading back into the park like we had planned, we headed on up into Canada. It was a pretty uninspiring day weather-wise, so we decided to skip Waterton National Park as well (the Canadian half of Glacier park). We drove through Kananaskis and Canmore, both of which were looking pretty dismal and drab, and camped the night in Banff.

We managed to drag ourselves out of bed for another early morning (although not quite sunrise!) to visit Lake Louise. In spite of it being a bit overcast, it was still stunningly beautiful, and the nearby Moraine Lake possibly even more so. We definitely plan on heading back to both of these again soon, they are seriously breathtaking.

The Icefields Parkway between Lake Louise and Jasper is one of the most famous roads in the world, and for good reason. It has spectacular scenery along its whole length, even in spite of the less than perfect weather. We did a short walk at Beau Pass to an overlook that looks down on Peyto Lake, which is a stunning bright blue glacier lake. At the Columbia Icefields we toyed with the idea of getting out and doing a walk, but to go with our trend from the last few days we had a nap in the car instead! They say to allow 1-2 hours at the Icefields, and we managed to spend about 2.5, but only about 10 minutes of that was conscious!

We drove through the township of Jasper and spent the night partway back to Edmonton so that we could head to Mellowdale convention the next morning.

More pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/canadianmport/CanadianRockiesTrip1?authkey=Gv1sRgCOi-qsTfzcXVRQ#