Banff

Photos - Erith following our guide and the mule carrying lunch, the terrain that we were riding through, bears were around even if they weren't visible, and the Banff Springs Hotel.

Marcus says:

We cruised out to Banff - I love seeing the mountains rising above you as you drive out from Calgary. It's only an hours drive, so we got there mid-morning and started looking for a caravan site for Celene and Blain's caravan, which Reggie and Blain were driving out from Vancouver that day en route to New Brunswick. We checked the tourist information and they steered us out to Two Jack Lake, where we were told that there was no danger whatsoever of them filling up, as they were virtually empty.

We went to the lake as Erith wanted (of all things) to go for a swim. The water was cold, but not perishing as it was pretty shallow at the shore and the sun was sufficiently strong to take the edge off it. We made ourselves some lunch, then went for a drive to Lake Minnewanka. After that, we checked out the horseback riding situation, as that was something that Erith was very keen to do, and booked a ride for the next morning.

Blain and I had been swapping text messages so he could let me know how he and Reggie were progressing, and early in the evening they were approaching Banff. We drove toward them and picked out a couple of landmarks, then pulled over in a scenic roadside stop and called. The coordination was masterful and we found each other without issue. It was great to see them and they were doing a serious road trip.

We proceeded to the campground and parked the trailer, then took our car into town to get some dinner, as we were all starving. We took the first thing that we could find - Chinese, which was pretty nice. (There are still very few fast food places in Banff - Subway was the only one that I noticed.) We pigged out, then went back to the trailer to turn in. The mosquitoes were vicious! I don't normally get bothered by them, but they were lining up for all of us. Not timid little things like Australian mozzies either - these things were big and nasty. (I'm pretty sure that I saw tatoos on a couple of them and that one was wearing a knife, but it was getting dark so I wouldn't swear to it.)

The next morning we got up, had breakfast and prepared to go our separate ways. I woke up fairly early and noticed that Blain was missing - I found him sleeping in the truck. He says that I was snoring, but Reggie (nearly deaf), Erith (able to block it out) and I (blissfully unaware) hadn't noticed it. (If a tree falls in the woods... oh, never mind - I believe you, Blain.)

We went on to our horse riding appointment, following Erith's meticulously prepared directions designed to prevent us from getting lost. (She was very excited and not willing to take any chances.) There were shorter rides, but we decided to do a butt-busting 7 hours - if you're going to do it, you may as well end up walking the walk. We were in a group of four with a guide and mule packed with lunch. The other two were a mother and daughter from Canberra. The daughter hardly said a word the whole time and the mother said little, but what she did say tended to be a whinge. They were third and fourth in line with Erith just behind the guide though, so we hardly saw them all day.

I liked riding with a western saddle again - I soon found myself resting my wrist on the horn with a split-fingered grip on the reins, just like a real cowboy. Ali had offered me the hat that I was wearing in the photo on his quad bike and I'm glad I wasn't wearing it - if I had, I'm pretty sure that I would've been calling everyone "Maam" and rolling cigarettes one-handed with my free hand...

The scenery was spectacular. We hiked up the back of the Banff Springs and up to Sulphur Mountain, where the hotsprings and the gondola are located. We kept going around Sulphur Mountain and up the valley toward Mount Rundle, which runs all the way to Canmore. The paths varied from being driveable to steep, narrow paths. I was following Erith and saw her horse lose its footing at one point - just a slip of the hoof, but on a perilous section of track. I didn't say anything, but she had noticed it anyway, so told me about it after we'd finished. She was brave about it - not being overly fond of heights, I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd panicked, but there was no way she was going to miss out on the ride.

As rides go, it was spectacular. We didn't see much game - a couple of deer and a marten or something, but it was very beautiful and a gorgeous day. We wore pants because of the saddles, but the weather was perfect - it was shorts weather. (But then again, when isn't it?) The mosquitoes were bad for a while, but eased off as we got to a higher altitude, only to be replaced by horse flies. A minor inconvenience though - there was nothing I would have changed. More wildlife would have been nice, but that's a bit of a crap-shoot.

We finished the ride by coming west through the south end of town, past waterfalls and the golf course. Our sitting muscles were audibly screaming, but I noticed that everyone sat a little higher in the saddle as the Japanese tourists snapped photos of us.

We were too tired and sore to go on to Radium, so we booked into a hotel outside Banff with a pool and spa and tried to work the kinks out of our newly discovered muscles. We had an early night, then set off for Radium early the next morning.

Banff was nice. Seeing Reggie and Blain was great and Banff is still a pretty cool little town. They've managed it well and it has a nice feel, even if it is a tourist trap. I was glad that we spent an extra day there, but we were rapidly running out of time - it looked likely that we would have to abandon our plans to go to Vancouver Island. All the same, I was determined to let quality rule over quantity - we were not going to race from place to place just to say that we did it. It's not my style - normally I would race, but I'm glad we didn't.

Oh yeah - the girls being chased by a bear? A couple of days later I heard two bear reports - one was of two girls being chased at Lake Minnewanka, where we had been paddling. The other was of a girl being found near a ski resort, dead and eaten by a bear, though they had yet to establish whether the bear was the cause of death. They're out there, they just aren't as visible as when we were kids and everyone fed them by the side of the roads.