Banff

This morning we woke up in Banff and spent some time doing wildfire research. There are some wildfires burning in the next province over, but thankfully, none of them are currently close to our planned bike route. After learning this good news, we drove up to Lake Louise to do some hiking before we leave the area on our bikes tomorrow.

Mike, Katelyn, and Jonathan in front of Lake Louise

 

We went on a hike from Lake Louise up to Lake Agnes

We made it up to Lake Agnes (also home to a cute tea house, not pictured here), and I think we found one of the world's top lunch spots.

There was a shuttle that took us from the Lake Louise overflow parking lot down by the highway, up and down to the lake and back. It was very convenient and well-run.

Katelyn and I realized that, from our brief experience, we like the way the Canadians handle tourism from a public infrastructure perspective. Rather than expanding parking lots up the mountain near the lake to handle peak-season traffic--along with the accompanying environmental and economic costs--the national park just parked hundreds of people in an overflow parking lot several miles away down by the main highway and provided a free, clean, frequent, and excellently managed shuttle up and down. That meant less sitting in traffic for us, and less environmental and economic costs for Canada. We also like the town of Banff (where we're staying) because, as we experienced today, you can get dropped off in the middle of town and can walk to all the services you need. Moreover, the town was packed with people... but since those people were mostly pedestrians (remember, all those hundreds of shops, along with the banks, churches, etc. are densely situated so that everything is in walking distance), the whole town felt alive without feeling congested. This stands in contrast to many other tourist towns I've been to (I'm thinking mostly of tourist destinations in the U.S.).

After we got back to the town of Banff, we parted ways with Mike so that he could fly back to Atlanta. It was SO GREAT hanging out with him in Banff.

Katelyn wades through our gear which has once again been strewn on the floor. This time it's to organize it into our various bicycle bags to prepare to bike out.

Once we made it back to the hostel, we continued preparing for our bicycle departure. We plan to head out on the first riding day of our bicycle journey tomorrow (Tuesday).