The Centre starts you off in a regular tour bus that takes you across the highway and down to the edge of the glacier. The bus driver gives a running commentary on glaciers and moraine and the geology of the area.
Once you get to the edge of the glacier you transfer onto a second bus with huge wheels equipped to deal with travelling acrosss the terrain of the glacier. As the bus travels slowly to the center of the glacier the driver continues the commentary about the area, plus a series of safety rules that must be followed once you leave the bus to walk on the glacier. Stay inside the blue pylons. Don't walk behind the buses. Common sense stuff.
That's our ice bus. Once you get off the bus you have 25 minutes to explore the glacier and, believe me, that's enough, because it is, not surprisingly, incredibly cold on top of a glacier, even in July. We had been told that glacier water was OK to drink, and I had intended to try that, but once I realized how cold it was I decided to fight the icy wind to snap a few photos and then keep my hands in my pockets!
We walked on a glacier- yay. Then we piled back into the two buses back to the Visitors' Centre where we bought more souvenirs and had a bite to eat. We noticed that this glacier visitors' centre was by far the busiest and most crowded place we had come across in our trip to Banff so far. We hoped it wasn't a sample of the rest of the trip to come (and in most cases, it wasn't).
We got back onto the Icefields Parkway then and headed straight south to Lake Louise. And somewhere on that stretch of road we left Jasper National Park behind and entered Banff National Park.
Once in Lake Louise we headed right to our hotel, which was easy to find. I was surprised at how small the town of Lake Louise was. We pretty much walked everywhere from our hotel and the main area of town was a small cluster of stores and restaurants, plus a Visitors' Centre, that seemed quite a bit smaller than Jasper. There was a residential area that we didn't get into, though.
Settling into our hotel we had our next major encounter with Banff wildlife (though we both had seen deer on the way to Maligne Canyon).
That's our hotel- we were on the first floor there where the lady is standing. Everyone bunched in the corner there were looking at some of the cutest little varmits we'd seen yet. A little girl (the balcony lady's daughter)was feeding sunflower seeds to little animals that looked like mini-gophers. A man with authority nearby told me they were marmots, but later we were to learn that they were actually Columbian ground squirrels.
The girl and the woman spoke Russian and neither of them knew English, but the woman talked to the girl and then gestured to me when she saw me trying to take photos and the girl came shyly over to me and offered me a handful of the sunflower seeds. I sat down on the grass with her and we fed the two or three ground squirrels and took their pictures. Very cute! Later in the day when I came out onto the balcony again the girl was still there gesturing down at the grass. I figured her two or three furry buddies were still there, but when I got to the edge she was courting about ten of the fuzzy guys! A regular Columbian ground squirrel whisperer.
We walked out into Lake Louise that night, had some dinner, checked out some more gift stores and discovered that the prices were way higher than we were used to! Touristy area, indeed. A bag of John's favourite Coffee Crisp bites that we would buy for $3 at home were selling for $7 here. Eek. Still the area was laid-back and pretty and, surprisingly for mid-July, not crowded.
And here is the view from the parking lot of our hotel that night. Again, just amazing mountains.
Next- Seeing the actual Lake Louise, and my first trip to British Columbia!
You can find the rest of my glacier photos here: Jasper National Park
And you can find my Lake Louise photos here: Lake Louise
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