Banff, Alberta - September 23rd to 25th, 2022

Banff has a nice mixture of shops, views, and hiking. For a lively atmosphere, there is the town of Banff, with very walkable streets full of shops and restaurants. A gondola can whisk you up to breathtaking views. If you’re in the mood for a more peaceful atmosphere, plenty of long, remote hikes are a short drive away in Banff National Park.

Friday was overcast and a little cooler. We only had about a 45 minute drive to go from Lake Louise to Banff, so we were in no hurry to leave Lake Louise. After dumping and filling our tanks, we drove over to the Lake Louise Visitor Center to buy a Banff sticker. In the neighboring strip mall, there was a bakery, Laggan’s Mountain Bakery & Delicatessen. Of course we had to walk over and check them out. We each had a raspberry and cheese bundle along with a cup of chai latte. Delicious!

From there we drove over to the historic train station. It is still operating as a train station, but it also houses a restaurant. There were some old train cars on display, but they were roped off so we couldn’t get very close to them.

Then we hopped onto the highway and started our drive to Banff. We noticed that tall fences lined both sides of the highway to keep the wildlife safely off the road. Every now and then, there would be a bridge. The bridge was not for human traffic, but for wildlife traffic. The wide, land bridges were covered with vegetation, including trees.

It was laundry day. It had been eleven days since the last time we did laundry and our hamper was overflowing. The only coin laundry in Banff was located downtown. There was no parking right next to the laundromat. We parked on the street a couple of blocks away, paying $3 (Canadian) per hour. Then we carried all our clothes over to the Laundromat.

There were plenty of washers available when we arrived at about 11 am. Thank goodness we arrived that early, because the place filled up while we were there. It seemed a little pricy, about $10 per load to wash and dry, but we were happy to have clean clothes again. After about an hour and a half, we were lugging our three loads of clean clothes back to our Red Tail Lodge (our camper van).

The town of Banff is very cute. It has some of the most interesting architecture we’ve seen so far in Canada. You can tell it is a ski resort town. It just has that ski town vibe.

We saw there was a Boston Pizza down the street. We’ve seen a lot of Boston Pizza restaurants in Canada, so we were curious what it was like. It was after lunch time and we were hungry, so we ventured in. Boston Pizza is a Canadian chain of sports bars. It had a nice atmosphere inside. We both ordered a side garden salad along with a small “build your own” pizza. Ann had spicy Italian sausage, green pepper, and red onion on hers while Keith had pepperoni and fresh tomatoes. We’re so predictable! The salads were lovely, but the pizza was just OK. The crust is not the style we prefer.

While we were eating our lunch, we made plans for the next day. There was the Banff Gondola that would take you up to the top of Sulphur Mountain. At the top, there was a boardwalk over to a historic weather station and a couple of restaurants. The forecast called for sun the next day, so that sounded perfect. We read that there is a Roam bus route that stops at the campground and will take you into town. Then there are two different buses that will take you to the bottom of the gondola, one is a Roam route (Route 1) and the other is a free one (if you have a gondola ticket) that goes from Banff directly to the gondola once an hour. We read somewhere that the bus from the campground was free for registered campers. We weren’t sure of the details about how that all worked, so we walked across the street to the visitor center to get more information. Yes, the Roam Route 6 is free for campers from the campground to downtown and they will even provide one transfer for free. However, the return trip is full fare, which is only $2 (Canadian) per adult. You can purchase gondola tickets at the Elk + Avenue Hotel.

So we walked over to the hotel to get our gondola tickets. We reserved a 10:30 am gondola ride with a return gondola at 2:30 pm. Our plan was to eat lunch at the top and take our time exploring the top of the mountain. That meant we should take the 10 am gondola shuttle, which leaves right from the Elk + Avenue Hotel. We also learned that our gondola ticket will give us a free ride back into town on the Route 1 Roam bus which runs a little more often than the gondola shuttle bus. Great! That meant we only had to pay for the Roam bus from Banff back to the campground at the end of the day.

Then we drove over to check into our campground for the next three nights, Two Jack Lakeside Campground. It is a small and quiet campground in the woods next to Two Jack Lake. It was very peaceful and soothing after the shock of all the traffic, noise, and bustle of people in Banff. It will take us a while to get used to that again. The bus stop for the Roam Route 6 bus was less than a five minute walk from our camp site. That’s much better than the 0.6 mile walk we had from our Lake Louise camp site to the shuttle bus stop!

After cooking dinner, we relaxed and listened to some podcasts we had downloaded earlier. We had a weak cell signal, but we could not get any throughput whatsoever, so it was rather useless. We’re still wondering if our poor cell service was due to our phones getting lower priority on the Canadian networks or there are just too many people around us fighting for bandwidth on the cell towers. Perhaps it was a combination of both.

Saturday, we were up at 7:30 am and caught the 8:37 am Roam bus 6 into Banff. That put us in town an hour earlier than we needed to catch the gondola bus, but we saw a coffee shop next door that we wanted to try, Good Earth Coffeehouse. Ann had the raspberry white chocolate scone with a chai latte while Keith had a croissant with a maple Americano coffee. Ann could not decide which scone was better, the one at Good Earth Coffeehouse or the one she had at the Other Paw Bakery in Jasper a few days earlier (Jasper, Alberta - September 17th to 19th, 2022).

The 10 am shuttle bus was a very comfortable ride up to the base of the gondola. We walked right off the bus and into the line for the gondola. In no time, we were being whisked up Sulphur Mountain. The Banf Gondola is a bi-cable system and it was a very smooth ride up to the top. It is used for sightseeing rides year round, as this is not where the ski slopes are.

At the top, the large building houses two restaurants, a museum, a theater, and an observation deck. It was a little too early to eat lunch, so we visited the museum, then watched the 15 minute movie on Banff that was playing in the theater. In the museum, Ann was impressed by the Brewster brothers, Bill and Jim, who started leading guided tours of the area in 1892 when they were 10 and 12 years old. By the time they were 18 and 20, they were running the official tour company Brewster Mountain Pack Trains, which is still in operation today. Times have definitely changed. There is no way kids that young would be allowed to guide people in the wilderness and run their own company.

One of the restaurants, the Sky Bistro, serves food a la carte from a menu. The other one, the Northern Lights Alpine Kitchen, serves an all-you-can-eat buffet. Both restaurants have wonderful views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. We chose the buffet. The food was wonderful. Being a buffet, of course we overate. Sometimes you have to splurge every now and then.

After stuffing our faces with delicious food, we waddled along the boardwalk over to the historic weather station, enjoying the views along the way. The weather station was built in 1902 and is no longer used. A cosmic ray station was operated on this site by the University of Alberta in Calgary from 1960 to 1978. The existing weather station was too small for the cosmic ray station, so another structure was built. The weather station is still standing, but the cosmic ray station was demolished in 1981.

After taking the gondola back down, we waited a long time for a bus back to town. The Roam buses were running behind schedule. We learned that part of the issue was that there was a road race going on that day in Banff, the Melissa’s Road Race, with 5000 participants. So traffic in the town was rather congested, probably more than normal. But we were not in any particular hurry.

When we made it back to town, we went straight to Cow’s ice cream shop. It’s not that we really needed to eat again after such a large lunch, but it was a lovely sunny day and we hadn’t had ice cream in a while. Keith’s vanilla milkshake was fine, but Ann really liked her ice cream cone with a scoop of mint chocolate chunk and a scoop of chocolate.

Banff seems to put a priority on pedestrian, bicycle, and public transportation over vehicle traffic. We like that. After returning to Banff, we walked around town a little, then walked the trail along the river over to Bow River Falls. As soon as we turned off of Banff street and onto the trail, the change in atmosphere was almost instantaneous. The trail was in the trees, muffling the noise from the traffic and the people, replacing it with the sound of the water flowing down the river. Ah, that was better.

The trail is wide and used by pedestrians as well as cyclists. Even though there were a lot of people on it, it was rather pleasant and relaxing. At the falls, there is a view up to the historic Fairmont Springs Hotel. On the way back along the river, we stayed on the south side of the river instead of taking the pedestrian bridge back.

There was an interesting building at the end of Banff street that we wanted to check out. It turned out to be the historic Banff National Park Administration Building at Cascade of Time Gardens. The gardens surrounding the building looked wonderful, but it was a little bit too late in the season. There were still some flowers, but many of the planter beds were empty and the ponds and waterfalls had already been drained of water for the season. We’ll have to come back during the spring or summer to see it in its prime.

For dinner, we walked over to Three Bears Brewery & Restaurant. Yes, we were eating again. Smash burgers with side garden salads for both of us. Keith washed his down with a pilsner while Ann drank an iced tea, Canadian style, slightly sweetened flavored with lemon. The salads were wonderful and the burgers had crispy edges and a delicious sauce. We’ll have to do some more hiking the next day to work off all those calories!

After stopping in the IGA store for a couple of needed items, we sat down at the bus stop to wait for the Roam bus back to the campground. We had to pay for this bus ride, for the first time all day, but it was only $2 per person. We had coins we needed to spend before we crossed back into the States. In fact, we had been using cash most of the time over the past couple of days in an effort to use up our Canadian currency. Usually you can go to a U.S. bank and exchange foreign bills, but they generally don’t exchange coins. Now that we were done doing laundry in Canada, we were trying hard to get rid of all of our coins. They are great for leaving tips.

Sunday we went for one last hike in Banff. We had calories to burn! The hike we chose was Bow Glacier Falls. It was about an hour’s drive from Two Jack Lakeside Campground back north onto the Icefields Parkway. The trailhead is at Bow Lake. Bow Lake was one of the places we stopped on our drive to Lake Louise. There is a nice, red-roofed lodge there with a cafe. The cafe was closed for the day when we visited before. We were hoping we could stop in there for a treat after our hike.

We got on the trail around 11 am. The cafe was open until 4:30 pm. That should give us plenty of time to complete our hike and then relax outside the cafe, savoring our snacks.

The trail starts out by following the shoreline of the turquoise lake. Then it follows the stream that flows from Bow Glacier. The waterfalls are actually visible from the trailhead. The trail is pretty flat until the stream enters a narrow canyon. Then the trail makes a steep climb, with steps built into the slope to help with the footing. Before reaching the waterfalls, the view opens up again as the trail crosses the rocky moraine. Crossing the rocks right at the waterfall so you can get close to them is a little tricky, but manageable. Some trail descriptions call this a rock scramble, but we were able to remain upright and just use our trekking poles. We were able to get close enough to touch the water. Of course it was icy cold.

The air was also pretty cold. The waterfalls face north, so they were in shadow. There was also a strong, cold wind. We learned from our time at the Athabasca Glacier earlier (link to previous post), that glaciers create a wind that flows downhill from them, called katabatic winds. The air cooled by the glacier ice swoops down, since the cold air is denser and heavier than the warm air.

After admiring the waterfalls for a little while, we walked back along the trail until we were out in the sun again. Then we found a nice large rock to sit on and enjoy the snacks we brought with us. It was still windy there, but the sun and our rain jackets kept us warm and comfortable.

On the way back, we ventured out on the trail that led to a cabin. We went just far enough to be able to peer down into the narrow canyon. You actually can’t see the canyon from the Bow Falls Trail, but you can hear the water flowing through it. We could hear voices down in the canyon. No, we were not hearing things. Where the trail comes back down to meet the stream, people were walking in the stream up into the canyon. Brrr! We walked over as close to the canyon as we could without getting our feet wet to peer up into the canyon.

We completed the 6.1 miles of 1004 feet of elevation gain in just under four hours. It was hike number 50 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2022.

We made it back to the cafe at the lodge before 3 pm. Perfect! After purchasing their homemade ice cream sandwiches (chocolate ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate cookies), and cans of cherry soda, we found a couple of red Adirondack chairs to slump down into and enjoy our purchased items, the sun, and the view. A perfect way to end a hike! Ann sometimes believes Keith enjoys the cafes and teahouses we visit during our hikes better than the hikes themselves. She’ll keep that in mind if she needs to bribe him to go on a hike.

We were back at our campsite in time for dinner. It was leftovers again, which we were thankful for, since we didn’t feel like cooking. It was warm outside that evening for a change, so we sat outside in our camp chairs to relax and enjoy it. Candice and Jack, a couple from Lacombe, Alberta, stopped by and chatted with us for a while. They were giving us ideas about places to visit the next time we come to Canada. They are a lovely couple and we enjoyed meeting them. Safe travels!

Although we preferred the more laid-back atmosphere of Jasper to the north, Banff has a nice appeal as well. The difference could have also been from our timing, we were in Jasper right after it opened back up after a wildfire, so the crowds of people may have been less than normal and the running event in Banff may have drawn a larger than normal crowd. Banff is a little more upscale than Jasper, in our opinion. But both Jasper and Banff need to be on your bucket list, if you haven’t visited them before. They are also worth more than one visit.

Check out our related video: Banff, Alberta

(Ann)