Our Trip to Banff (Part 5)- Lake Louise and Yoho

We got up early Friday morning, headed to a deli for bagels and coffee, and then drove north to the actual Lake Louise. Very pretty and peaceful and at that time of day there were only a handful of us roaming around the shore. The water was an extraordinary opaque blue-green, but because it was overcast and misty in the mountains it was hard to get those picture postcard photos.

Chateau Lake Louise was right on the edge of the lake, too, and we walked through and I bought a Lake Louise t-shirt. The crowds started growing as we wandered about and we had a few fun encounters.

This was a typical moment- lots of people in the parks would ask you to take their picture or would offer to take a photo for you. John and I took a lot of the "Here, get close, and I'll turn the camera around and take a picture of the two of us together!" photos, but in Banff that usually meant someone would come over and offer to take our camera from us to take our picture :). When I first got to the lake a lady who was by herself asked me to take her picture and she told me she was from Taiwan. We told her we were from Ontario and she looked confused, so we explained we were from eastern Canada. Her face lit up and she said, "You're from Canada! You are lucky! So lucky!". It's good for me to remember that :).

Further down the lake I ran into a woman who was communing with some really adorable chipmunks. I tell you, the "Don't feed the wildlife" signs are all over Banff, but the chipmunks and squirrels are so ridiculously tame everywhere you go that it's clear they've all been playing up to the tourists since birth. The woman was feeding the chipmunk unsalted peanuts and she asked me if I would feed him a couple of peanuts so she could snap some photos.

Yeah, this guy was climbing right up my jeans. Ridiculously tame, but undeniably cute. It wouldn't be our last time with tourist-entertaining chipmunks this trip. Note, too, the Clark's Nutcracker on the rocks. These grey birds were hopping all around Lake Louise, too.

As the crowds started getting bigger, we hopped in the van and headed west toward Yoho National Park. It was cool we were going to get to a -third- national park during our trip and, even cooler than that, the border between Banff National Park and Yoho National Park is also the border between Alberta and British Columbia, so it was my first time in British Columbia!! Whee!! Which means I've been to all ten Canadian provinces now, except Saskatchewan. Though I'm not sure if Nova Scotia counts, since we just stopped at the Halifax airport there on the way home from Newfoundland.

Yoho Natioanl Park is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, so being that Canada's national park system is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year (and Banff National Park was our first national park) I guess Yoho was around awhile before it became a national park. Also interesting, "Yoho!" is a Cree phrase that expresses awe or amazement. Perfect for this park.

Here was our first Yoho stop, The Spiral Tunnels. Railway lore looms large in the Banff area and The Spiral Tunnels are a series of switch-back tunnels that spiral through the mountains. Supposedly if you stand at this look-out long enough you could see a long train coming out of one of the upper tunnels while the caboose is still going into one of the lower tunnels. We didn't get that lucky. One other thing- take note of the highway in this photo- we travelled west on this highway into Yoho and then back east along it to head back to Banff. Now, look at the photo below:

Same highway twelve hours later. Holy cow. We were watching TV news in Calgary two days after we left Yoho when they showed scenes of this mudslide on the main highway in Yoho National Park. We drove this road 11 in the morning- the mudslide happened 11 that night causing major chaos and detours most of the next day. You see the avalanche warning signs on roads all over the area, but, man, that picture (taken from an Internet newsite) brings it home. Here's the article I pulled that photo from: Mudslide Closes Trans-Canada Highway

Anyway, still avalanche-free, we continued down the highway to the small town of Field, where we walked around a bit and checked out a few stores. There was also a Vistors' Centre in Field which had what had become my favorite chain of stores in the parks- the "Friend of the Parks" stores. They were a series of souvenir shops set up in Visitor Centres in all the Banff Parks. I came across the first one in Jasper, where I bought this sweatshirt:

Cute logo, John bought a hiking hat with that logo, too, and I really liked the fact that not only were the souvenirs in their shops less expensive than most other places, they were also often hand-made and better quality, plus a portion of all sales went back into maintaining the parks. By the time I hit Yoho and Banff I was specifically looking for "Friend of the Parks" stores to buy my souvenirs.

Our last stop in Yoho was Takkakaw Falls, one of the tallest waterfalls in Canada. "Takkakaw" is another Cree word that means "it is magnificent". And it was.

From there we turned back east and headed out of Yoho, back into Banff National Park, past Lake Louise and onward toward the town of Banff. Our afternoon in Banff can be described in one word- wet. But more on that next.

You can see the rest of my Lake Louise and Yoho photos here: Lake Louise and Yoho