Trip Report: Western Canada Road Trip 2015 Day 2 – Banff

Sunday August 16, 2015

Today’s main order of business was a visit to Johnston Canyon. We had breakfast at the hotel, and headed over to the canyon, a short drive out of town, as soon as we could to beat the crowds.

Before entering the canyon there is an area with lots of loose rocks. Visitors have built hundreds of inukshuks from the rocks. We got in on the action and built some of our own.

Eventually it was time to hike, and we entered the canyon. This is not technical hiking at all, as the path is quite wide and doesn’t have much grade to it. As the canyon narrows, there are raised sections built up along the rock faces. There’s a good safety rail the whole way so we never had to worry about the kids’ safety.

There was another beautiful vista around every corner. It was misty and we had some intermittent sprinkles, but overall, the weather held for us.

We spent a few hours hiking up and down the canyon before returning to Banff for lunch. We had a bit more rain as we headed up to the Banff Springs Hotel for a look around. However, the walk up there proved worthwhile, because this is where Mallory was able to find an elusive souvenir. She had done a school project about pikas, and was hoping to find a stuffed pika on this trip. Remarkably, there is a store in Banff called Pika Village, but they didn’t have any such item in stock. Lo and behold – we found one in the gift shop at the Banff Springs Hotel!

When we crossed the river and came back into town, we had a special meet-up with someone: Aunt Amy made the trip from Calgary to see us.

Back to the hotel we went. I can’t remember if we had dinner before or after going back to the hotel, but there was a nice pool there, and the kids were itching to go for a swim, and so we did.

No vacancy. It was definitely peak tourist season in Banff.

Later that night, we took a quick drive out of town before it got dark. We were in search of some elk, and I don’t think we found any on that drive. However, we did get a great view of the Banff Springs Hotel. This shot was taken from Surprise Corner on Tunnel Mountain Road.