A Christmas Road Trip to Banff - Part III

Hey there! You've just entered the third and hopefully final part of a recap of our pre-Christmas trip from Vancouver to Banff, Dec 21-24. If you didn't read the first two parts, then you should only continue reading if you're one of those people who likes to pick up a new book and flip straight to the last chapter. If that's not you, then read Parts One and Two before continuing. If that is you... weird.

When we last left our heroes, Bailey and Dave were just falling asleep to the soothing sounds of the Ghostbusters movie, cozy in their bed in the King Edward Hotel in Banff on the night of Saturday, December 22...

We turned off the movie (still un-finished) around 10:30, hoping to get a good night's sleep before our early rise to climb Mt. Rundle the following morning.

Around midnight, some bros came home from (I assume) the bar, wasted and inconsiderate as could be, arriving in the hallway outside of our hotel room with flourish. Turns out we were so fortunate as to have reserved a room on the same end of a small hallway as a whole group of 20-somethings whose three rooms literally surrounded us on all sides. For the next three G.D. hours I listened to them going in and out of different rooms, slamming the doors, swearing at each other through the hallway, loudly calling out to one another "WHO HAS THE LIGHTER? DO YOU GUYS HAVE THE LIGHTER?" These guys were really acting like this was their first time staying at a hotel without their parents, although they sounded like they were in their mid-20s.

I was growing increasingly livid - as Dave slumbered seemingly quite peacefully beside me - but couldn't bring myself to get up to yell at them. Something about their shitty voices made me think that if I went out and yelled at them their behavior would only get worse. But the cherry on the proverbial cake was when some dumb broad started knocking on our door at 3AM and attempted to open it. That was the straw that broke Bailey's pissed off back, and I unabashedly hollered, "WRONG FUCKING ROOM!" at our door. Of note is that this is the only reason Dave woke up at all. The darling. I finally called the after hours service desk at this point and complained. The ass-clowns in our hallway chose this time to shut up. Finally with some peace and quiet, I was on the verge of falling asleep at last, when our telephone rang. It was the after hours service guy calling me back to let me know that he'd gone into our hallway to check it out but hadn't heard anything. Thanks, man. Getting this return phone call at 3:30AM when things had FINALLY settled down is exactly what I was hoping for. Exactly.

Needless to say, when the alarm went off at 7AM, Dave turned it off and we did not get up. No Mt. Rundle after all.

We woke up again around 10 and I ran down to Evelyn's to get us some bagels and coffees while Dave packed the car up with our snowshoes. If we weren't going to climb Mt. Rundle, we were at least going to get in some aggressive hiking - something to get our blood pumping after the stunning-but-leisurely snowshoe walk through the Cave & Basin Marsh Trail the day before. We decided to hike Sulfur Mountain, which would be a nice strenuous hike with supposedly great views of the Bow Valley.

The trailhead for the Sulphur Mountain Trail was right beside Banff Upper Hot Springs, but we did not stop to see those this time. They're probably awesome. The view from the parking lot:

.  view of cascade mountain from the banff upper hot springs parking lot .

It was a 5.5km hike (about 3.4 miles) to the summit, with 28 switchbacks winding us up to an elevation of 7,486 ft, for a total elevation gain of 2,300 ft.

Along the way, the trail kept swinging back and forth beneath a gondola that also runs up to the summit:

We exchanged several waves with gondola-riders. The lazy bastards.

The views along the path were really astounding, especially when the blue skies came through:

.  view of fairmont banff springs hotel from sulphur mountain trail . 

It was a perfect hike - challenging but not grueling. Exercise, definitely... but totally enjoyable! I was really hoping we'd be able to ride the gondola back down, slightly out of fatigue and slightly for the "riding a gondola down a big mountain" giddiness factor. At the summit there was much more of happenin' scene than I'd anticipated. I figured there'd be a small shack of a building for the gondola, but there was a pretty big building that had a restaurant, cafe, gift shop, plus the gondola loading/unloading area. It was bustling with all the people who'd been waving at us as we hiked the mountain from below them.

.  at the summit .

The coooooolest part of the summit was this long, doozy of a boardwalk system that followed a short ridge from the gondola/restaurant area to Sanson Peak, where there was an old weather observatory station that we could peer into.

.  boardwalk running from gondola up to sanson peak, in the distance .

There were multiple observation decks along the boardwalk where I was able to put my camera's panoramic function to good use:

.  click for larger versions  .

.  looking back at gondola/restaurant from sanson peak .

Dave treated us to grilled cheeses and hot chocolates at the summit restaurant, and we ate our lunch with more wonderful mountain views from the windows of the building. As it turns out, the good "folks of the mountain" offer free gondola rides down the mountain for anyone who hikes up during the winter. Bingo!

We enjoyed our leisurely ride down, snapping a few pictures and even spotting our car in the Upper Hot Springs parking lot as we neared the bottom of the mountain. Which was thrilling.

For dinner in town that night we found a real gem... The Old Spaghetti Factory. It's totally just a chain restaurant but it was probably the most affordable meal that we've eaten at a restaurant since moving to Canada. It was packed with families and kids of all ages - obviously where all the low-key tourist families flood to in Banff. All of the entrees were not only super cheap - they all came with a side salad or soup, warm bread, coffee/tea, and spumoni ice cream.

The ice cream was good and all but that didn't mean we couldn't shoot over to Welch's Chocolate Shop again for a nightcap of sweet, sweet diabetes goodies. I got another one of their homemade chocolate bars - this one was a swirled mix of mint and milk chocolate. David got what seemed to be a homemade version of a Crunchie, which is a chocolate-covered, honeycomb-esque, toffee candy bar that is readily available here in Canada. We walked around town a bit more buying a few souvenirs and Christmas presents, then took our treats back to the hotel and enjoyed them while we finally finished watching Ghostbusters from the warm comfort of our bed.

We woke up early-ish on Monday - which was Christmas Eve - because we wanted to make sure we got onto the road much earlier than we had on Friday. We had no idea what kind of driving we'd be able to expect along the way and preferred to not be driving in the dark if the weather was bad along that one horrendous stretch of Rt 5 (please read that tale here... although you really should have read that already, since you're now eyebrow-deep in Part 3).

I went to Evelyn's one last time to pick up another morning's worth of bagels and coffees while Dave packed up our car for the drive home. Sad to leave the winter wonderland but pleased to be facing what appeared to be fine weather for our trip, we made our way out of town and back onto Rt 1 in the early morning darkness. The 500+ mile drive home took about 10 hours - a solid 2 hours less than the drive to Banff had taken us, because the weather never turned ugly.

.  the only picture i took from the drive home  .

That night we wrapped up a ton of Christmas presents that we'd gotten ourselves and I arranged them beneath our tree...

FYI - Dave spent the entire next day on Christmas preparing me gobs of good food - from eggs and bacon in the morning to a roast chicken/veggies/stuffing/gravy dinner to real stove-top hot chocolate made with light cream for dessert. Mmmm.

Overall, a fantastic way to spend the holiday. Banff was breathtaking and I'm so glad that we went there. I hope that this long, drawn-out tale about our trip has inspired at least one person to put Banff, Alberta on their list of places to check out!! 

A Christmas Road Trip to Banff - Part II

This is Part II of a riveting tale about the holiday road trip that David and I took to Banff over the pre-Christmas weekend (December 21 - 24). Read Part I here... A Christmas Road Trip to Banff - Part I... or face elimination.

The morning after our not-so-leisurely 12-hour car ride from Vancouver, BC to Banff, AB, I was ready for a pick-me-up. We woke up on Saturday (a great start to any day, to be sure) and got ready to head out into the cold. It was a good thing that we both brought our down jackets because we definitely needed them.

Driving through town in the darkness the night before was lovely, but it was nothing at all compared to seeing Banff in the daytime. It looked like a little Swiss Alps town! There were a few breathtaking, ginormous mountains practically right on top of town, as well as plenty of other mountains surrounding the town. There seemed to be more and more mountains every direction you turned. Being in the middle of a mountain range is... not lame. And seeing all of the peaks in the sunshine against the blue sky was probably the best they could have possibly looked!

We went to Coyotes Southern Grill for breakfast, which claims to have the Best Breakfast in Banff. It was certainly adequate. After breakfast we walked around town a little bit, snapping pictures and freezing our noses off:

On the agenda for the morning was locating the visitor information building to find out some trail info about a mountain we were fixin' to climb the following day - Mt. Rundle. FYI, if you're looking for the visitor information building in Banff, it'll be the building that just says "INFORMATION" on it in huge letters. Not to say that's what you'll find there necessarily. I suppose it depends on what you'd like information about.

This was the conversation that Dave had with the man behind the desk there:

Dave:  We're thinking of doing Mt. Rundle tomorrow.
Info Man: (Looking back at us bewildered) Thinking of doing what with it?
Dave:  ...Climbing it.

The visitor guy did not react as if this is something he gets asked about often - or ever - which sort of alarmed me... like maybe Dave was getting me into something that we shouldn't be getting into. Which he'd never do. (< You couldn't hear it, but that was dead pan sarcasm.)

The man said we'd have to call a phone number to speak to the town's Safety Commissioner (da fuck??) to ask him about avalanche conditions and trail conditions for Sunday... and he added that the Commissioner would probably tell us not to climb it. You'd think that would leave Dave with some hesitance about hiking the damn thing, but it didn't. That's my boo.

After the visitor center we went back to the hotel to warm up and figure out where we'd like to spend the rest of our Saturday afternoon snowshoeing. We decided to take a casual trail just west of Downtown with very little elevation, a popular cross-country skiing and snowshoeing loop called the Cave and Basin Marsh Trail.

The parking area for the trail was down a short snowy road with fields on either side of it and a bright red barn at the end... Oh, there were also a few mountains surrounding it all:

Not too shabs.

As if that wasn't all enough of a sight to see, as we stood beside the car putting on our hiking boots and snowshoes, what the hell comes strutting along but this:

How Christmassy! Look at those guys, dashing through the snow! Oh, what fun!! Apparently that's what the red barn is all about... horses. Pulling two-horse open sleighs. Awesome.

We began snowshoeing through mostly flat woods along the Cave and Basin trail. The trail was relatively flat but the surroundings were nawwwwwwt. Cue photo ops a-go-go:

Along the way we passed a hot spring...

I loved the way the spring looked - cutting through the snowy surroundings with steaming hot water. It made the air smell heavily of sulfur, though, so we didn't linger near it too terribly long.

The Cave and Basin Marsh Trail is about a 2.4km hike in itself, onto which we tacked an additional 5km or so to make our way to and from the Sundance Canyon:

.  sundance canyon trail in blue, cave and basin marsh trail in pink  .
.  click for a larger, clearer view .

It was great exercise and beautiful weather - couldn't have asked for anything better. On our way back to the car after we finished the loop, we saw the horse-drawn sleigh again - a lovely cap to the walk.

After the snowshoeing we headed back into town and stopped into Evelyn's Coffee Bar for hot cocoas and a late lunch - a chicken pesto panini for me and a sausage roll for David. There are I believe four Evelyn's Coffee Bars in Banff, and the town is not large. Pretty much wherever you are in Banff, you're probably quite close to an Evelyn's.

For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant in town called Masala and afterwards stopped into Welch's Chocolate and Candy Shop for some goodies. This candy shop was heavenly - a sweet-lover's dream. Colorful lollipops decorated the shelves, there were rows and rows of candy-filled jars behind the counter, and there were literally more Pez dispensers there than I have ever seen in my entire life. If by any strange chance you happen to be a Pez junkie, go to Welch's in Banff. The largest Pez selection you'll probably ever come across.

From the array of homemade goodies behind the glass case in the front of the store, I picked out a milk chocolate candy bar with two oreo cookies embedded in it and drizzled with white frosting. David chose a chocolate-covered caramel. #diabetes.

It was a great Saturday, but it was chillllllz-billlzzzz outside and we planned on waking up early to hike Mt. Rundle (BTW, the Safety Commissioner was less alarmed by our questions about climbing Mt. Rundle than the Info Man was, so we were definitely planning on "doing" Mt. Rundle on Sunday), so we walked around town only a little more before heading back to the King Edward Hotel and continuing to watch the Ghostbusters movie we'd begun watching the night before.

Stay tuned for Part III!

A Christmas Road Trip to Banff - Part I

David and I were excited to make our first-ever "Christmas together" a great one, so we (he) planned a trip to Banff, Alberta for Dec 21 - Dec 24. Banff is a beautiful mountain town nestled in the Canadian Rockies and can be anywhere from 9 to 12 hours away from Vancouver, depending upon the weather along the drive.

Here are some bird's eye views of what our drive would entail...

In relation to "important places":

.  a reference for all you states-siders  .

In relation to the BC/Alberta provinces:

.  see all those mountains?!?!  .

On Friday morning (12/21), we were out of our apartment and on the road by about 10:15. Once we were out of the city, it didn't take very long till we began driving past some large, beautiful mountains:

We drove on Rt 1 E for about 90 miles, then cut off another sizeable section of Rt 1 by taking 5N in Hope, BC. This.... is where things began to take an interesting turn. And by "interesting" I mean freaking scary.

Rt 5N, as it turns out, is one bitch of a mountain pass. By this time it was snowing out, which slowed traffic down quite a bit. We also started passing a lot of signs that told us that we needed to have chains on our tires to use that road from October 1 - April 1. Interesting note: we didn't have chains on our tires. Dave was pretty confident with his Kia Sportage's 4WD though, so I was totally and completely calm with not a worry in mind. NAWT. I was freaking out, white-knuckled in the passenger seat as the snow got worse, the driving got slower, and the number of cars we passed that had slid off the side of the road increased. At one point we saw a car that had slid and was facing the completely wrong direction, parked in the fast lane. At another point we passed a pickup truck that was turned onto its passenger side, the would-be contents of the truck bed strewn all over the highway. In short, this one sign was pretty accurate:

Eventually things got slightly less terrifying for a little while, and I was able to enjoy the view of the snowy trees along the highway:

We eventually met back up with Rt 1 in Kamloops, BC, on which we drove for the remaining ~7 hrs of the trip. Here's the last photo I took on the drive to Banff, because from this point there was too much snow, too much fright and too much darkness for me to take any more pictures...

Alright so not to get too dramatic at this point... but I was voted Most Dramatic in high school... soo... WE COULD HAVE DIED. JK it wasn't quite that serious. As it got dark and the snow was becoming a total bitch, we realized that our headlights kept getting covered up with snow/mud splatter from the road, which made it really difficult to see the lines on the road. Normally in the dark or rain, you can kind of focus on the outer white line on the right sides of the road, to make sure you're not driving off the road or straying too far from your lane. When those white lines are covered up by muddy snow, and the center yellow lines are either in the same condition or just not there at all, it's much harder to be confident that you're driving in the right place. Cue driving 40 KPH on a 70-90 KPH road. That means we were driving slowly, for all you 'Mericans.

We had to pull over a few times to brush the muddy snow off of our headlights, which isn't an easy thing to do on a road that's covered in snow, not being plowed, and heavily trafficked by HUGE tractor trailer trucks. Every time we saw a potential place to pull over, there was a tractor trailer truck way too close to the ass of our car to be able to safely slow down enough to pull over in time to scoot into the pull-off. Bastards.

I'll cut this part a little short... Point being:  It was a nerve-wracking and slow drive to Banff.

As we were finally approaching Banff after about a 12-hour, stressful drive... we missed our fecking exit. No seriously. We missed the exit we'd basically been anticipating for over 500 miles. My first thought was, "Good lord, who knows when there'll be another exit now!!!" David was... not pleased. As we were beginning to assess our fate, wondering whether or not we'd be forced to drive for another 50 miles before we were able to take the next exit, we spotted a sign indicating that there'd be an upcoming exit for the Banff Industrial Center, which I told David to NOT miss under any circumstances. Fortunately this Industrial Center exit was not far from the original exit at all, and actually provided us a nice little drive through the center of town from a direction that we'd otherwise not have come.

Finally, we'd arrived! Driving up Banff Ave (the main street there) in the dark, we were surrounded by plenty of Christmas lights, beautiful white snow and bustling tourists. Even in the dark, it was obvious that Banff was a gorgeous, Swiss Alps-looking town. We couldn't yet see any of the HUGE towering mountains that surrounded the town... but in the morning that would be a different story.

We checked into our hotel - The King Edward Hotel - which is when we realized that we'd crossed timezones and that it was actually 11:30pm, not 10:30pm as we'd thought. We also realized that it was pretty effing cold outside and that we weren't in Kansas or Vancouver anymore.

David was wired from driving and drinking gallons of coffee and Coca Cola all day, so he suited up to go for a little walk around town. I, on the other hand, was too mentally exhausted from our harrowing drive to want to do a single thing other than put on my pajamas and crawl into bed. When David returned from his walk we did the next thing that made sense:  Began to watch the first Ghostbusters movie on Netflix. 

Stay tuned for Part II... and possibly even Part III! That's when the good stuff happened! ;)