Canada

Yay! Summer vacation! We (I) totally needed this, as it has been one of the least fun summers I can remember, for me at least...work and school kinda burned me out so we'd been waiting to take a trip like this. It was totally worth the 15 hour drive each way (well, 24 hour drive on the way there, but that's another story) for the week we got to spend in Canada. We stayed in Lacombe, Alberta with my aunt and uncle. The drive through Alberta was pretty, it actually rained a little, which brought out the colors of the surrounding farmland beautifully, and provided us with an awesome double rainbow.


Oh yeah, we also passed this:


Our second day there we drove to Banff National Park. This is definitely the biggest national park I've ever been to. It was amazing. The Canadian Rockies were majestic and the water in all the lakes and rivers was bright crystal blue. We found out that the color comes from rock powder that falls from the mountain in the glacier melt and allows blue and green light to be reflected back from the water.



We stopped at Lake Louise (above) and looked around the hotel they have on the grounds. It was called Chateau something (meaning it's really expensive - $600/night minimum), and the grounds were really beautiful.




We then went to the actual town of Banff for lunch and shopping. It's a kind of quaint-looking, touristy, ski-area town, very Park City-esque, only cooler. Later we took a gondola ride up to the top of Sulphur Mountain, and from there hiked over to another peak. Amazing views from the gondola and mountain tops, including a baby bighorn sheep:





We also caught the elk herd that lives at the Banff Springs golf course. We were really close to some of them, which was cool, and they didn't even seem scared. Then we stopped a Bow Falls on our way back to Lacombe.






We can't wait to go back to Canda again and spend more time in the park and in Banff. I think it would take several days to see it all. It was an amazing place!