Spectacular Banff

We left Canmore on August 12th and headed into the center of Banff to pick up a rental car. It was a beautiful sunny day and Banff was packed with people. We ended up parking at the train station which luckily still had space for RV’s and walked into town to get the car. We had to do a massive amount of laundry and conveniently there was a coin laundry in the same complex as the car rental. Even better was a quick trip to the Wild Flour bakery to reward ourselves for the effort! It was late afternoon and we drove both vehicles to the Lake Louise RV overflow lot, about 50km north of Banff, just a gravel parking lot for $9 a night. 

One of our main goals in Banff was to go to Lake Louise, which is no easy task. Lake Louise is so popular it is impossible to get a parking space during the day, even harder for RV’s, which is why we rented the car. The only options are a shuttle bus or try after 7pm or before 6am. We hadn’t been able to get into the Banff campground for the night, which is why we were in the overflow parking lot and this turned out to be perfect! We headed up the winding road around 7pm and were excited to get a parking space and walked to the lake. It was cloudy and started to rain, and Sara after walking back with her paddleboard bag decided not to get on the lake. We walked back up the hill to the car in the rain and pondered our next move. We were getting ready to leave when the rain cleared and a rainbow came out – so back down to the lake we went for some great sunset photos!

Encouraged by our evening success we forced ourselves to get up at 4:30am the next day (neither one of us are morning people), and we drove up the mountain road in the dark. We were so excited to get a parking spot again as the area was quickly filling up. We had a spectacular morning with incredible sunrise lighting for John’s photography. Sara spent an hour and a half paddleboarding round the lake, enjoying the peace of nature and some unforgettable views as the sun came up over the mountains. It was well worth the early rise and effort!

We stopped in the small village for breakfast and got some tips from a local on where to stay on the Icefield parkway. This would be our next location and we didn’t have any official campsites booked. 

On the way back to the RV we drove the Bow River Parkway and stopped to see beautiful views of the river and mountains. There was one particular place John wanted to check out called Morant's Curve, which has the river and train tracks together. A lot of photographers try to get a photo when the train comes by, but not knowing the train timetable we didn’t want to wait hours. We were treated to a sighting of a large elk by the river munching on foliage.

We were worn out and it had started to rain by the time we retuned to the RV, so we took a nap to warm up before heading to the Tunnel Mountain campground in Banff.  We had a quick dinner and then drove to Vermillion lakes which John had been looking forward to photographing. It was starting to rain again, so the lights weren’t the best, but he was still able to find a shot with some great reflections. It was an amazing day!

On Thursday August 14th we spent the morning driving around exploring Two Jack, Johnson, Minnewanka and Cascade lakes. In the afternoon we drove back to Lake Louise village and took the last shuttle to Moraine Lake. The lake is very popular and access was changed to shuttles only a few years ago to address the 5,000 vehicles a day that were being turned away due to no parking. It’s another beautiful location although conditions weren’t as great as our time at Lake Louise. Sara managed half an hour of paddle boarding before the windy conditions made it too challenging. It was a lot of effort for limited reward, including needing to bang the rudder repeatedly with a rock to remove it so the return shuttle wasn’t missed. We were lucky though, to see a black bear on the return shuttle road!

For a change we enjoyed a restaurant meal before heading back to Banff. We had originally planned on more days in Banff but couldn’t get camp site reservations so we really packed a lot into a few days to make the most of the time!

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