BANFF National Park
It all started with a plane ride to the city of Calgary, Alberta. After a long day of in-flight pretzels and shuffling through customs, we arrived just in time to pick-up our rental. As unconventional as it may seem, we decided to rent a U-Haul because renting a car at the time would have cost a down payment on a 2022 4Runner.
The U-Haul turned out to be exactly what we needed for the winding mountain roads and off road terrain. Once we left Calgary, we had to set course to Golden, British Columbia. Since we arrived at 8:30pm, we were too late to take highway 1 straight to Golden, due to a road closure. It would have been a 2.5 hour drive it but it ended up being a 5 hour drive! Super tiresome since we were up since 6am that morning. Luckily our Airb&b host was kind enough to stay up until 3am to welcome us to his wonderful cabin. The cabin was a bed and breakfast; the host's name was Rick accompanied by his friendly labradoodle companion, Watson.
Every morning we woke up to a great home cooked Canadian breakfast before we grabbed our gear and hit the road. We made stops at Emerald Lake, the town of Field, Lake Louise, the city of Jasper, and of course BANFF. We will expound more on more of these experiences in later blogs so keep an eye out like aye aye captain.
Banff is a mosaic of mountain peaks with stunning views at every turn. We were so fixated on views and attempted to get many shots out of our moving truck. During our travels not only did we drive and hike the mountains, we also had some adventurous experiences along the way. From the foggy and dramatic views from the top of the BANFF gondola - to exhilarating white water rafting on the Kicking Horse River - to walking on a timeless glacier.
All in all, the trip exceeded our expectations and the best thing was that we were able to travel outside the states for the first time since the pandemic. This has been a quick overview of our trip to BANFF and we will be adding a part 2 of this post. We are excited to share stories of our experiences and of course the food.
