Beautiful Banff

We spent today enjoying beautiful Banff.

It seems as though every street you walk along has a gigantic mountain at the end of it.

We picked up our rental car and i did some driving on the wrong side of the road. It is much more difficult than i remember - particularly things like parking areas where i just want to be on the other side. I have trouble sourting out which side the rear view mirror is on and keep looking at the side mirror instead - just because that is the way my eyes are used to going...

I made Kathy go on a gondola road to the top of a mountain with me. She was very brave.
You can find a picture of us in the gondola (for a limited time only) at www.banffphotography.com Look at the pictures for the Banff gondola for 19th august page 3.



the views from the top of the gondola - spectacular - what else would you expect.

We had lunch at Banff's spaghetti factory - even that had an amazing view.



Kathy had a rest and I took a big walk (driving on the wrong side of the road is just too scary). I also met our friends from the train who live in Duffy again - will I keep meeting them in Cooleman Court now as well - or is this just a thing that we have happening when we are both on the other side of the world?

I found some beautiful gardens - that look as though they should have a cascade running through them - well I guess not everyone can have something as good as my front garden. The annualshere look so terrific - I feel that planting them in Canberra is just cruel.


I walked on to the original Banff springs. Considerably further than I thought. 15 minutes the girls in the shop said. More like 1.5 hours... Some miners found the springs orginally by mistake and set out to make some money out of it. They built this big swimming baths that was apparently all the rage in about 1910.



In the end they couldn't decide who had what rights to it, so the government took it over from all of them and put in a National park around it.

Now, you can't even dip a finger in the water - because an endangered snail - about half a centimetre - lives only in the waters ot of Banff mineral springs.

Then brief trip back to our hotel (arriving just before the rain hit in earnest) before an evening wildlife tour (Kathy skipped this one too - she already sees as much Canadian wildlife as she is include to see). The story is that you sometimes see elk in the main street of Banff - but, clearly, they have had no shopping to do this week. I saw some elk on the wildlife tour - but the rest of the animals must have been doing their best to stay out of the rain - after all, why should they come out in the rain so a bunch of people can gawp of them.


I had better go now - as I am just about asleep with my eyes open.

Tomorrow - the next luxury stint at Lake Louise.



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