Trip to Banff/Jasper: Day 7

Thursday we drove down to Banff to check it out. We stopped at Cave & Basin National Historic Site. There's a cave under their visitor center and it is some of the main feeder for a hot springs. We didn't pay to get in and see it, or smell the stink.

We wandered the paths of the place and that was nice.

This is going apparently into the cave area (for authorized personnel only). Notice what the sign next to the door says:



Yes, it's "Gas mask inside basement corridor". Man, really makes us want to go in now!

The Fairmont Banff Springs - this place looks like a HUGE castle! (maybe someday we'll go stay there, it's as low as $400 canadian per night!)

We went and saw the Hoodoos - rock formations kind of carved from water, wind, etc. They were neat, but we saw even better ones near Fairmont Hot Springs.

We also hiked up to a lookout, and along the way we heard, then saw, this crazy bird in it's nest in the tree. It was chirping like mad.



You could hear it long before you got to it, and even if no one was around it, it was chirping. If it would have been quiet, no one would have known it was there. Was rather amusing. (We recorded it on the camera, so, if you want to hear it, we could probably share.)

Cool view of Banff as the thunderclouds rolled in

Shortly after this picture was taken, we went back to the car and drove down the road a few miles. It got super windy and really dark. Then started to pour. We went into town and were going to check out the shops. Got our rain jackets on, walked around stores for 20 minutes, and then the sun was back out and it was nice.

We next stopped at Johnston Canyon Falls, which was about 15 minutes from our campground. There was a lower and upper falls, with even more if you wanted to hike in further. A really neat place. (lower falls)

They had done a lot of work to make catwalks through the forest and alongside the river clear to the upper falls (~2 miles in).

We drove Highway 1A, and it was neat. At times, the lanes split and there was only your lane headed along, then a mile down the road they joined up again. We wished we had a sporty little car to speed through the turns and pretend we were making a commercial.


There also were tons of daisies all along the roadside. Alodia loved them.