Day 12 - Glorious Mountains

So, shortly after Will came home from the clinic last night, I asked if we were going to for sure go into Banff tomorrow, and he said, "let's find a place to stay there the next few nights. Praise! Then began the task of finding a reasonably priced lodging during the high season for three nights (over a weekend=more expensive we now know...). There were not a ton of options when you searched online, and most were well over $250, if not $400, per night. Some were even more. A condo in the same place we originally were staying were $350 a night. We were paying around $700 for 6 nights! Long story short, Will called a lot of places and struck out a ton. Finally, he booked a room via Priceline at the King Edward Hotel. But when the confirmation came in, it said for only two adults. We knew from our phone calls that most of their rooms were just one King or one queen bed, which would be quite tight. Will's plan was to try to sneak our kids in and just squeeze no matter what. We went to an outdoor store and bought a camp pad even. Now, I tend to be more of the "better to ask forgiveness than permission" kind of person, and I urged Will to tell them the truth, that Priceline hadn't asked for number of people and when we tried to cancel it said it was going to have to charge us for two nights. Then, I said, give them our sob story and hope they take pity. I really did not want to try to sneak our kids into a tiny room and get caught and then have to pay big fees. So...Will quickly realized in the tiny lobby that we wouldn't be able to hide our kids, so he told them (most of) the truth. First, they wanted us to pay for the family room, which was astronomical, but then they agreed to let us stay in the one room and offered a cot. So, I am typing on the side of the queen bed, Eleanor is asleep in the middle of the bed, and Ethan is on the other side of the bed on a cot. Currently, Will is reading on the floor at the end of the bed. This will be a fun experiment! 

Honestly, though, I could care less how/where I sleep at this point because we are actually here! And here is right smack dab in the middle of Banff. Originally, we were to stay two towns over, about a 25 minute drive from Banff. It would have been just fine, and I surely wouldn't have minded the space. But now that we only have a couple of days, being even closer is better. And since we have no room here, we will be motivated to stay away all of the day and just be here to sleep anyway. Ethan is probably the most down about this hotel (he really loved the breakfast at our last one...this one doesn't even have a breakfast), but I keep telling him we will hardly be here. It's clean, the shower is good, and we are in Banff. I'm a happy camper. And, actually, we remarked that my tent might be larger than our room. Will and I said our house will seem really huge when we get home! 

This hotel is right on Banff Avenue in downtown Banff. The city is crowded! There are people everywhere on the streets. It reminds me of Park City, UT or someplace like that (Tahoe or Vail, I guess) where it's pretty high end and full of art galleries, fancy stores, restaurants, etc. What's so amazing is that you are literally in the middle of all the mountains. You are walking down this very urban street but you look up and see mountains everywhere. So cool! 

We arrived by 2 or so and ate some sandwiches I had made that morning. Then, we packed up and headed out to explore a bit. Since we are right in the park already, there is a lot to do a very short drive away. We went looking for Lake Minnewanka.                                    but, along the way, stopped off at another, smaller lake called Lake Johnson, I believe. It was all very pretty. And we wanted to hike around the whole lake, but Will realized he had left the bear spray in our room. There were several warnings about bears in the area because of berry season, so we went a little ways in, making lots of noise, and then turned back around. 

Then we drove to find Lake Minnewanka. It has a large dock with some tour boats and small canoes and row boats you can rent. I guess this is the only lake in the park you can bring your own boat into, as well, which we find a bit odd. It is fine to see tour boats and small non-motor craft, but seeing other boats takes away from it a bit. Luckily, there weren't many out and about. Ethan really liked hiking close to the lake because it was very rocky and he likes to feel like he is really doing harder climbs. We found some rocky shoreline with a bunch of trees stacked up like a shelter and the kids spent time playing with rocks. Eleanor opened up a "rock store," from which Ethan would buy rocks for skipping. She had the most fun and asked Ethan later how he would rate her store: awesome, the worst, epic, or terrible. He rated it epic, which made her quite happy. She plans to open the store back up again tomorrow. Ethan, like his dad, is kind of amazing at skipping rocks. I have never been able to skip a rock more than twice, but Ethan, no joke, had several that skipped 10-15 times. He's a natural! 

We hung around a bit, took a lot of pictures, and then had a short drive back to town. Then came the search for a meal that didn't completely break the bank. If you're reading this, you know we do these trips with very few meals out. We stay great places, do awesome things, and save by making our own meals. So these next few days will be hard for Will! We finally settled on this Spaghetti Warehouse, and I think we chose well. The pasta dishes were between $10 and $15, and you got bread, soup or salad, and ice cream with every meal. Not bad! And, honestly, the food was pretty good. I got spaghetti in a spicy meat sauce, and it did not taste like typical, mass produced sauce. We had two wait about 40 minutes for a table, and now I know why. Good price and tasty! 

After dinner, we hit the IGA for some breakfast things and more bread so we can make sandwiches to take on our hikes tomorrow. We will go to Lake Louise tomorrow, which is about a 40 minute drive, so not bad at all. We've been told to do at least one of the two tea house hikes there. You actually hike to tea houses that opened years ago and are still operational. All supplies are hiked in. 

So, there was certainly a several day blip of unpleasantness on this trip. I am still disappointed that we won't be able to do all we wanted to originally, but I think this trip will help us know what we might want to do and see on a return trip someday. At the very least, I'm just glad we didn't spend 5 days in Calgary, wasting away. I'm grateful that the smoke has cleared (our waiter confirmed it was awful for several days), and that we were able to get back. And, Will just said his leg is slowly starting to feel better...just in time to get back into use!