We were just staying the one night in Banff so we packed up after breakfast and headed out of the motel ready for another day of sightseeing. Just around the corner from the hotel the traffic ground to halt - it turned out a couple of deer had picked this morning to take a stroll around town and, like true tourists, hadn't figured out how to operate the pedestrian crossing. Luckily they were soon out of the way (a split second before Amy managed to line the camera up as it happened) and the traffic started moving again.
Our first intentional stop was the gondola that goes up to the top of Sulphur Mountain, around 2500m above sea level. The gondola ride takes you high over the trees where you can see plenty of hikers making their way up the trail which zig-zags back and forth below. Rather them than us, particular since it looked like it might rain.
At the top of the mountain is a short boardwalk taking you from the gondola building right to the very peak, where there is a precariously positioned weather station. In years gone by a guy called Norman Sanson used to take readings at the weather station every week, he managed to do it for 30 years without missing a single week. That's a lot of hiking.
We took the gondola back down and drove a short way to Bow Falls, another of Banff's tourist attractions, which were impressive in it's ferocity if not height. And for the fact that like the local lakes the water is almost emerald in colour.
So, after chalking up another waterfall visit and of course some more waterfall photos we got back on the road and drove to a town called Canmore, not far along the highway, where we thought we might get some lunch. Canmore as it turns out isn't very exciting. There's a small art gallery in the library building, although you have to contact the librarian to get it unlocked so we skipped that. We'd just finished walking the length of the high street (spotting very little of interest) when simultaneously the wind picked up and the rain came down, natures way of telling us there are more interesting things to be done.
We still hadn't managed to locate any lunch so we gave up and went to the local McDonalds and ordered a Double Big Mac and Double Quarter Pounder (between us, not each). I wasn't even that hungry really, I just thought like I might never get the chance to have a Double Big Mac again so I felt obliged. Only later did I realise I could just order two normal Big Mac's back home and make my own, but by then the calorific damage was done.
After Canmore the mountains quickly ran out and in a surprisingly short time we were driving across a wide flat plain on the way to Calgary. The journey only took an hour, so mid-afternoon we rolled up to Ros's house on the outskirts of Calgary. It's a fairly generous abode, although the policy on the Heritage Lake development where she lives is that each house must have three garages minimum, so in comparison to the other mansions Ros's house actually looks quite petite.
Inside, the house is split into two floors with very similar layouts. Ros lives pretty much on the upstairs floor while downstairs is reserved for visitors like us. There's not much to do around there after some dinner and a short walk around the estate (to eye up the houses and pick which one we'd have if we won the lottery) we just read and played on the DS.
Incidentally Amy's lost in her virtual puppy already so I'm now stuck with feeding and walking two puppies every day. It's a hard life.
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