Day in Banff

We had maybe a little bit of a quieter day today.  Although it was still quite busy, it was the first day in a while that we didn't drive a long distance and stayed in the same hotel room we woke up in so it seemed like a relaxing day!  No packing or unpacking luggage.  Yay!

We started the day at the Banff gondola.  It was nice but it's the third gondola we've been on in the last 2 weeks.  There are beautiful views but we are getting to the point where we can only take so many pictures of mountains!  Haha!  Honestly the kids are getting a bit tired of hike/mountain/hike/mountain.  I am excited to get to Drumheller for a change of scenery plus dinosaurs!!

Owen pretending to be a mountain goat at the top of Sulphur Mountain!

Views

There's a nice boardwalk to walk on for many different views.

Relaxing in some awesome chairs at the top!

Owen decided to buy a mountain goat stuffy at the gift shop.  His name is Jasper.

We had to drive through Banff on our way from the gondola to the hike we were going on. The easiest place to stop for lunch was the food court where we got a combination of shawarma, Popeyes and Subway!

We then went over to the Johnson's Canyon hike.  The hike is about an hour and is super easy through some amazing canyons.  It ends at a big waterfall and you can wait your turn to go through a cave to an opening right near the falls where you can really feel the power!

The falls at the end

Going through the 'cave' to get close to the falls

The other side

It was really hard to get a selfie!  It was also very wet from the spray back there (plus it was raining)

My view for much of the trip ;). We then drove over to Lake Minnewanka where we had booked a boat trip on the lake.  We were early so we did a drive around the lake trying to spot grizzlies (no luck).  When we got to the parking lot the wind picked up and it started to POUR!  We stayed in the car until we had to run for the tour.  Thankfully it cleared up and we had no rain on the boat ride!

On the boat.  Our tour guide was quite good.  I'd say the boat trip was a bit meh.  The views from the boat weren't that different from the views from the shore.  They kids got a neat activity book which kept them entertained on the hour long boat ride which was great.  Also, I fed them candy.  That's a common strategy.  They are going to go into sugar withdrawal for sure when we get home!

The kids REALLY wanted to do another escape room so we found one in Banff and booked it for after supper.  After the boat trip we drove around the lake again looking for grizzlies (no luck again) and then drove into Banff to look for some supper.  The weather was so beautiful at this point we wanted to find somewhere outside.

We found a rooftop patio and everyone got great meals (especially Anna who ordered of the kids menu and got to pick 3 sides with her meal, so got mac and cheese, cheesy garlic bread, caesar salad and tater tots!  The perfect meal for a 10 year old!

The escape room was a bit better than the first one, but honestly still not one of our favourites.  It was really hard (which we knew going in).  Two of the puzzles required writing with a dry erase marker and ours barely worked which made it frustrating and difficult.  I asked for several hints related to a radio which we knew was supposed to be giving us morse code through headphones but we couldn't figure out how to turn it on.  It turns out it was supposed to be on as soon as we plugged the headphones in and the lady hadn't turned it on right.  So we wasted a bunch of time and it caused frustration.  She gave us some extra time to make up for it but we definitely were not close to escaping!

Tomorrow we are off for a day and a half in Drumheller before flying home!

Trev's photo dump