It’s been a while since our last update–things in the Bear House have been trucking along as usual! It’s been a little busy the last two months, mostly due to work and school that have been keeping us busy. Tim just recently got hired for a new position with the county, and studying for my MSN degree has been keeping me busy as well.
We were able to take a little vacation at the end of September–which we were considering to be a belated first wedding anniversary trip–to a location I have been dreaming about for a while now. I snagged us some fairly priced tickets from Ontario Airport to Calgary, and we were off to Banff and Jasper National Parks!
Some tips:
To start, I purchased this Moon Travel Guide of the Canadian Rockies from Amazon, and basically came up with a general itinerary with a bit of leeway for other sightseeing opportunities along the way. This is my second book by Moon, the first being the Alaska Travel Guide of Anchorage, Denali, and the Kenai Peninsula I used for our trip earlier this year to Fairbanks, AK.
I also rented a car in advance through Costco Travel, since I find that to be the most economical and trustiest way to book rental cars pretty much everywhere. You don’t have to put any down payment and there are completely free cancellations.
If you use the Costco Citivisa card (as of writing this), international rentals are covered by insurance from the credit card as long as you decline the rental companies insurance. But always be sure to double check your credit card so you can avoid those extra fees.
Everywhere we went accepted credit cards (make sure you have a credit card that doesn’t charge you international fees or else you might be paying a 3% fee for every transaction), so we didn’t have any need to exchange any USD for CAD.
So without any further ado, here is our road trip adventure from Calgary, Alberta, Canada to Banff National Park all the way up to Jasper National Park. This was probably one of the most beautiful and scenic drives I have ever been on, and one of my more favorite road trips!
Calgary, AB, to Canmore, AB
We flew into Calgary, AB, around 5 PM, picked up our rental, and decided we wanted to head straight into Canmore, the location of our AirBNB for our first couple nights. The drive was pretty straightforward, and we made a quick stop at the Hamptons Co-op on the way out. If you’ve never been to a co-op, they are basically stores that supported by not just sales, but also by members of the co-operative association to bring affordable prices to its members. They are great places to stock up on food, snacks, and anything that you might get anywhere else at good prices.
It was a very overcast and chilly day, sometime not uncommon to Canada in the autumn (or so I’m told!).
The drive into Canmore was about 70 minutes, most of it through fairly flat farmland on impeccable highway roads.
The clouds were lying low as we drove in, so we didn’t get a true grasp of the majesty of the Canadian Rockies until the third day of our stay. Canmore itself is a little town that sits about 15 minutes away from the entrance of Banff, so it is a great place to stay if you don’t want to pay premium prices for a hotel stay–but even then, the AirBNB prices for a shoulder season stay were about $175/night (pretty pricey for not being a hotel).
It had been raining the night before, and when we woke up, we were shocked to find that it had snowed overnight and dusted everything!
After a quick breakfast at the Summit Cafe, we headed up Trans-Canada Highway 1 to the entrance of Banff National Park. We ended up paying each day for the cost of two adults (or one car with more than one adult), since a season pass didn’t make sense for our brief trip.
After taking a turn onto the Bow Valley Parkway for the scenic route, we headed to Johnston Canyon Falls for our first hike. Funnily enough, because it was so cloudy, we had NO idea what the mountains were like around us on the parkway. We would realize what it was like the following day when the clouds lifted, but it was pretty cloudy that day.
When we got there around 9 AM-ish, the two parking lots both had quite a few spaces, but when we left, people were circling the lot like vultures. Make sure to arrive early because this seems like quite a popular hike.
The hike is a paved trail that meanders alongside Johnston Creek and at points becomes a metal catwalk that takes you right up against the canyon and hangs over some parts of the creek. The Lower Falls are about 0.6 km up, and the Upper Falls are another 1.6 km past. Past the Upper Falls are the Ink Pots (which we actually didn’t make it to, since we were a bit wet from forgetting our umbrella). This hike actually reminded me a lot of the Narrows in Zion National Park, Utah.
After we finished up at Johnston Canyon, we continued driving along the Bow Valley Parkway with our destination of Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. I had heard that both of these were HUGE tourist destinations and that the parking situation was somewhat of a disaster. We wanted to try and see both of the lakes, and since we were prepared for difficult parking and also difficult weather, we were willing to make as many attempts as possible to see the lakes in all their glory.
The entire drive I had my eyes peeled for any sort of wildlife–after being denied a bear sighting in AK, I was prepared for this drive! However, the most we saw driving to Lake Louise (this day) on the parkway were some mule deer walking on the side of a hill.
Lake Louise – Attempt #1
Lake Louise has 3 different parking lots on the way up–there is an overflow a couple miles down that you turn left on right after this sign, but if you continue up the mountain, there is first an overflow parking lot on the right, and then you continue up to the chateau, and there is another lot you drive through, and then a final lot at the top. (I wrote all of this from memory–can you tell we went to Lake Louise a few times?)
We were able to snag a perfect parking spot in the top lot, and eagerly racing down to the lakeshore, we were meet with this glorious view…
If you’ve ever seen Instagram pictures of Lake Louise, all I could say was, “huh????” As it so happens, it gets pretty cloudy up on the lake. We walked around the lakeshore a bit, checked out the inside of the Fairmont Hotel (very lakeside lodge-esque with a huge fireplace, wood trimmings, and antlers abounding), and then ending up deciding to leave and try again another day when the fog had lifted.
The road to Moraine Lake is to the left of the Lake Louise road, and 75% of the time (probably more) it seemed to be closed/full. The traffic control in Banff was well-staffed and very regulated.
We ended up taking the TCH-1 back to the town of Banff to check out things there rather than the parkway. First stop in town: Vermilion Lakes!
It was a very pleasant lakeside drive (you could walk it to), and we ended up taking our time and pulling over just to enjoy the scenery and crisp fall air.
Driving into Banff, of course there was a giant BANFF sign.. Also to note, one of the best purchases camera-related I’ve made this year was the purchase of this tripod from Amazon. It is only $20, and has been surprisingly sturdy through several trips and has all kinds of features that I keep discovering! So if you don’t have a tripod yet, this is a great one for the casual photographer.
Next stop was the Cave and Basin, a rather underwhelming tourist trap that is an historic site and the birthplace of Banff National Park and the Canadian National Parks system. It is the location of a hot springs that had a bathhouse built on it, and then ended up being made into a historic site. It had a cool video in this large structure that was the actual bathhouse building about the history of Canadian National Parks, but overall, I would probably have skipped this.
Behind the bathhouse building is another part of the hot spring. Endangered snails live in the water and thrive in the mineral-rich conditions.
After this, we continued our drive through Banff town and ended up at Bow Falls, a waterfall that sits below the Banff Fairmont Hotel. There is a parking lot directly adjacent to the shore of the Bow River that you can get some quite nice views of both the falls and downriver.
After Bow Falls, we were pretty exhausted, so we decided to go home to Canmore and relax the rest of the night. We got back to Canmore (from Banff town, it was maybe a 30 minute drive back to Canmore), Tim went for a run around Cougar Creek, and then we went out to dinner. We stopped at Green Chili Indian Cuisine for dinner, and it was probably some of the better Indian food I’ve had in my life, but was also probably some of the priciest I’ve had. I found on this trip that a lot of the places really did charge a touristy amount for food, and even outside of Banff, you couldn’t really escape it. Either way, it was delicious!
Icefields Parkway (Drive to Jasper National Park)
The next day, we woke up early, packed up our stuff, and started the journey from Canmore to Jasper. The straight drive without stopping was 2.5 hours to Jasper, and then to Hinton (our hotel location) was another 45 minutes. In total, maybe a little less than 230 kilometers or a little less than 150 miles.
When we left the AirBNB, we were in for the surprise of our life! All around us, the Canadian Rockies rose up. I had NO idea how beautiful of a place we were in until the sun came out and the clouds blew away–which incidentally was perfect weather for our drive us, since this is purportedly the most beautiful drive in Canada.
The Moon tour book does an excellent job of narrating the entire Icefields Parkway drive from Banff to Jasper, and we essentially followed that and did a pick-and-choose of sights we wanted to see. The entire drive has 13 viewpoints, multiple trails, and so many glaciers along the way (if you’re a glacier aficionado like Tim).
Stop #1: Herbert Lake
Funny enough, none of my pictures of Herbert Lake turned out well, especially since the sun was directly behind the lake. But you’ll have to take my word for it that it was nice. A very quiet little glacial lake with a nice little thicket around it.
Stop #2: Hector Lake Viewpoint
Something about the way the clouds obscure the tops of the mountains was a little magical. The peaks would fade in and out of view as we drove, and it was also so surprising to see that the mountain never ended where we thought it did but was often times much higher.
Stop #3: Bow Summit and Peyto Lake
The water in the Canadian Rockies is this unnaturally turquoise color which comes from the glacial silt in the water and the way it refracts the light. It makes this really strangely ethereal color that is so breathtaking you wonder why no one has ever told you that it really IS that blue and it really IS that beautiful (also that it’s not a filter!).
Stop #4: Peyto Lake – Trail to Shore
We decided to take an unmarked hike (from the Moon book) off of the parkway that was about 0.9 miles one-way to the shore of Peyto Lake. It is in a small, unmarked parking lot to the left of the parkway about 1.5 miles up the road from the Bow Summit parking lot. The hike is a pretty short one and is traveled enough and marked so you know where you’re going.
Stop #5: Sunwapta Pass & Nigel Creek View
It’s hard to describe what a huge glacially carved valley looks like, but they say a picture is worth 1,000 words!
Also on the drive was my favorite little creek/waterfall view–Nigel Creek. This was literally on the side of the road looking down (there is no actual viewpoint), but I happened to be looking out the window at the right time.
Stop #6: Athabasca Glacier
Once you cross over the pass, you are entering Jasper National Park, which lies adjacent and north to Banff. Our first stop in Jasper was the Athabasca Glacier. There is a parking lot at the foot of the glacier, and after a quick and very steep hike, you are at the glacial field! You can’t actually walk on it unless you take the bus tour from the Icefield Center, but we just did the little loop at the top.
Stop #7: Jasper and the Jasper Brewing Company
At this point, it was getting pretty late, and so we forewent the last few stops we wanted to go to (we planned to see them on the way back), and drove straight to the town of Jasper. It is a very small town that has about two main roads and then small avenues criss-crossing. We stopped at the fairly packed Jasper Brewing Company for a bite to eat that was nice after a day of snacking (not too many places to stop to eat at on the Icefields Parkway).
After dinner, we drove another 45 minutes to Hinton (right outside the northeastern border of Jasper), and packed it up for the night.
Stop #8: Maligne Canyon
Maligne Canyon is a really easy hike (if you start at the top) and can be quite brutal if you do the entire hike. It consists of a picturesque canyon that has six bridges crossing over it at different points. If you begin at the top, there is a large parking lot with ample space, and it is a very short hike to Bridges 1 and 2, a little bit further for Bridge 3 and 4, and then a much longer hike to Bridges 5 and 6. We parked at the top parking lot, went to Bridges 1 – 4, then returned to the car, drove to Bridge 5, and then drove again to Bridge 6. I can see how it’d be a very nice hike to do the entire canyon, but we were on a time crunch (and I also didn’t really want to hike the entire thing).
On the drive over to Maligne Canyon, we saw a bunch of people pulled over on the side of the road. On any trip where wildlife is possibility, when many people are pulled over, it means that there is something to be seen! We saw a herd of elk relaxing on the river–it was a bunch of females and one large male elk.
Stop #9: Horseshoe Lake
This was our first stop on the way back to Banff from Jasper. It was a small lake that at first, we were very unsure what was so exciting, but then after walking a little bit further, you are met with the glassiest deep turquoise lake ever with cliffs that you can just imagine people jumping from in warmer weather.
Stop #10: Athabasca Falls
Next stop was Athabasca Falls, one of the stops that we missed on the way in. It was probably one of my more favorite stops just because of the rushing water and the canyon. It was the whole picture!
Stop #11: Goats and Glaciers Lookout
This stop is called such because you can see both glaciers and goats (they come down the mountain to eat the salty bits leftover from the glacial mineral runoff). While we didn’t see any goats, it was quite a spectacular view.
Stop #12: Sunwapta Falls
We did stop briefly at Sunwapta Falls, but after seeing the previous two lookouts, this one was not quite as exciting. But something fun that DID happen was on our way back to Banff, we were forced to stop by a herd of bighorn sheep in the road! You know they are big horn sheep by their white butts with a small black tail. These all appeared to be female, as there were no large-horned sheep among them.
Lake Louise: Attempt #2
We eventually made it to Lake Louise around the golden hour time when the lighting was just right (maybe a little bit after), and so we decided to make our second attempt in hopes that we brought clear skies with us. This time, we were in luck! Parking wasn’t too bad due to the late hour (5 PM-ish), and so we parked and had a quick walk to the lake.
Moraine Lake: Attempt #1 (and only attempt)
After we finished up at Lake Louise, as we were driving out, we happened to notice that the Moraine Lake Parking Lot Sign no longer had a big FULL posted on it, so we decided to chance it! We drove over the Moraine Lake (which has significantly less parking), and then walked the short walk to the lake. This lake is much smaller than Lake Louise, but has a very quiet and graceful feel. It was still pretty crowded even at that time, but it comes off as a quieter place than Lake Louise, which feels quite commercial with its gigantic hotel and hundreds of tourists.
Lake Agnes Teahouse Hike
Our final big hike was the Lake Agnes Teahouse, which began at the Fairmont Hotel at Lake Louise and meandered up the mountain. The path itself is quite nice and paved most of the way, and by the end of our trip, much of the snow had melted (though not all of it). The hike is about 3.6 km or 2.2 miles one-way from the lakeshore up to the teahouse at the top right near the Big Beehive.
The hike itself goes uphill for almost the entire way, but you do get glimpses of Lake Louise here and there and the turquoise is so incredibly blue that it doesn’t even look real, especially with the sun shining right on it. After about 1.5 miles, you reach Mirror Lake and get a good view of the Big Beehive.
A little bit further up the trail leads to Lake Agnes and the Lake Agnes Teahouse, a small wooden cabin-like teahouse that is packed with people trying to get out of the cold and have something warm to drink. If you’re lucky to snag one of the 15 (maybe even less) seats inside the cabin, then you might be able to warm up just a bit. The prices are a little outrageous for what you get, but don’t forget you ARE on a mountain and these poor servers have to hike up all the supplies (as well as hike down all the trash). We order a hot chocolate (Swiss Miss?) and a tasty vegetable stew that warmed us right up. We sat for a bit and enjoyed the atmosphere and the view before heading back down the mountain.
We hiked back down, headed back to our car, and then drove back into Calgary for our final night. It was my choice for dinner, and by this time, I was starved for noodles or rice… So, of course, I chose pho. After our last dinner, we relaxed at the hotel and had one last night before flying home at 6 AM the next day!