Lake Louise and Banff

A couple of days at Lake Louise was followed by a short 60km cycle along the Bow Valley Parkway to Banff.  Both Lake Louise and Banff are centres for skiing and walking though many of the routes are closed - not enough snow for skiing and too much for walking.  

That said, we made the short 6km walk up a steep hill to Lake Louise from which the town takes it's name.  Actually, I am a firm believer in my rest days being rest days and the only reason we made this walk was that Susan led me to believe it was a level 1.5km!  She has learned how to be sooooo manipulative. 

All that being said, Lake Louise was a lovely setting and, in the Spring, is still frozen.  
 

At this time of the year, the great benefit for us is there are relatively few tourists about.  We are told that in the summer this area is like Clapham Junction with RVs.  That's more of a problem than you might think because these RV's are absolutely massive and about the size of a small truck or coach.  Most of them tow cars and not small cars either.  I actually spoke to one old chap who had a huge RV and I asked him if he required a special licence to drive one. 'No' he said 'a car licence is all you need'.  I was surprised and thinking of a suitable reply when he added 'or a motorcycle licence will do'!  Now I have not checked the accuracy of this information but, whether it's true or not, what it does mean is that there are people driving trucks around Canada on a motorcycle licence.  Susan and I are therefore so pleased to be leaving this area of Canada before the summer RV swarm.

Banff is a bit touristy but it's a lovely place, surrounded on all sides by impressive mountains.

We camped at Banff at a forest campsite where we had to lock away our food in bear proof lockers.  As far as I'm concerned though the bl***y bears can have the bagels and jars of Nutella and Peanut butter!  

I'm never keen on camping.  I like it, it's fine but I like my motel room with a bed, shower, power and a fridge.  Susan loves camping so she buys me tins of beer and sits me by the tent.  I can sit there happily for hours.  I told you she was manipulative!  She is a kind soul though - she lets me into the tent before the bears come out.