Alberta Canada

Wow! The drive from Montana up into Canada was a gorgeous drive. You feel as if you’re driving in a national park at times, then at one point you do have to drive through Kootenay NP! Travel days have always been my favorite and it keeps getting better and better. Not sure how any drive will top this one though!

We’re staying at Spring Creek RV park in Canmore, Alberta Canada for a week. Arrived on Monday late afternoon to our gorgeous site surrounded by a 360 Mountain View. I’m so happy we are on vacation this week and we don’t have to worry about work at all! After quickly setting up we took a 5 minute walk downtown for some dinner. What a cute little town! Everything was all closed by the time we arrived except for the restaurants so we’ll definitely be back again to shop around! The walk to town, distance wise is very short but the views you get along the river and along your walking trail call for many stops to take in all the beauty around.

Tuesday, September 7, 2021, our 2nd year wedding anniversary! Wooohoo, how awesome to be celebrating is Canada! After a long travel day, I didn’t want us to plan anything too crazy and tire us out so we just stayed near town, rode our bikes around and grabbed some coffee and breakfast. Then we decided to head into Banff downtown to check that out. The drive from our site is only about 15 minutes to get to Banff NP, and we ended up purchasing the annual pass to all Canadian NP! Good excuse to have to come back to Canada within the year! Banff downtown is pretty big. Super cute downtown with a mall and lots of shops and great restaurants. We did some shopping around before we decided to head back home to get a bike ride in before venturing out to dinner

There are so many bike trails near by! We picked one and hit the road. Mike found a small little mountain bike loop and took me through it a couple of times. That’s prob my first true mountain biking experience and it was so fun! He wants to go back so I can practice some more. I hope this doesn’t mean he wants us to go mountain biking more, I don’t think my legs can hang, haha! After a couple loops we continued ahead on the trail along the river and came up to a bridge. We were having fun riding up and down the bridge taking silly videos and pictures when we overhead a couple talking about jumping into the water! Of course I jumped into their convo and offered to be their ‘photographer’ for their little adventure! Fraser and Meagan are the sweetest, and we also met their pup, Sam who was so worried when his owners both jumped in. It was such a pleasure to meet these two amazing humans and have a moment with them. In fact, I’ll be seeing Meagan again soon as she’s an acupuncturist and I’ve been wanting to give that a try! I booked an appointment and will be seeing her at Back at it Sports & wellness clinic looking forward to seeing how this works! After capturing their jump and a few laughs we continued along on our bike ride, eventually heading back home to get ready for our ‘cloth napkin’ dinner for our anniversary. The restaurant I originally wanted to try was closed so we wandered around town until we found a spot that Mike liked. We ended up at Murrieta’s mountain bar and grill. We enjoyed a great dinner ending our beautiful anniversary night. 2 years down, forever more to go! Cheers!

Lake Louise is breathtaking. The turquoise glacier water is so unbelievable. We rented a canoe for an hour to explore the beautiful water. As you row towards the glacier in front of you. The views get even better and better. You could also bring your own kayak or paddle board here on this lake. Which I’d recommend only because the cost for the one hour canoe was kinda very pricey. We’ve been considering getting an inflatable kayak, the more water activities we do, the more we keep thinking about it.

After the quick one hour of canoeing we headed up towards the ski resort for a gondola ride! You could also go on a chair lift, but because it was pretty cold and I’m so scared of heights, we opted for the enclosed gondola ride! The gondola takes you up to about 7k elevation and gives you a beautiful view of the Canadian Rockies, the active Glaciers and Lake Louise. It was a bit cloudy on the day we went mixed in with some fire smoke as well so we didn’t get as clear of a view as we would have if the sun was out. Nonetheless still a beautiful view to take in. They have a small museum at the top where you can learn about all the different wildlife that live within the National Park. We didn’t see any wildlife on the gondola ride up and down, but they say usually you can spot some if you’re lucky. We saw a bride and groom riding up on a chair with their photographer in the chair before them, what an adventurous wedding group!

So many beautiful views at Lake Louise. We came back to Banff downtown for dinner. Parked at the train station and made our way to Main Street. After wandering around a bit we finally stopped at Park bar & restaurant for some dinner. Enjoyed a delicious meal after a full day of exploring and headed back home for the night

We’ve got a few more days here in beautiful Canada to explore and enjoy! It’s going to rain in the next few days so we aren’t quite sure yet what to do, but with all this time we have to research instead of work, I’m sure we can figure something out. Vacation days are the best! Enjoying each and every moment of it!