Saturday, September 4 2010: Today dawned the day the Edwards/Barden caravan loaded up again and drove the 58 kilometers down to Banff township for the last few days of the trip. Banff is more expensive than Lake Louise, so I opted to spend the extra night in LL rather than Banff itself. Not a bad plan, as there was more hiking to be done in LL. The drive back down Highway 1A had a hike on there that we both wanted to do called Johnston Canyon. It is an extremely popular hike along a gorgeous creek bed to two sets of water falls. It's also paved and packed to the gills with visitors. If you want, you can hike in farther past the upper falls to something called "The Inkpots" which is about the only geothermic area in Banff, apart from two sets of hot springs that are now large tourist attractions. The Inkpots are three small little hot springs in lovely blue, green and yellow hot springs colors, but the hike to the InkPots makes the entire Johnston Canyon hiking experience a 7.4 mile round trip hike and I wasn't sure I was feeling up to that, so the plan was to stick to the falls.
The checkout of Deer Park was leisurely, as we weren't even allowed to check into the Rundlestone Lodge in Banff until 4pm. On the way out, we stopped at the little Lake Louise plaza and I had a chicken pot pie and another one of those amazing Jamaican chicken pocket things for lunch/breakfast and then we hopped onto Highway 1A for a slow drive (speed limit is 60kph) down to Johnston Canyon. We knew we were at Johnston as about 1000 feet from the entrance to the parking lot there were cars that were parked along both sides of the road.. We both gave eachother a little smug look about this being a hugely popular place to be, apparently, parked ourselves and walked into the parking lot. There's a hotel at Johnston Canyon, a shop, restaurant and picnic ground along with the immensely popular trail.
The trail is not popular for unknown reasons, you can see why it's one of the park's busiest as soon as you get on the trail- the whole thing is right next to Johnston Creek, in the middle of dense forest, and on a series of catwalks carved and blasted into the side of the mountain. It's bursting with people, but part of the amusement is always watching the people anyways. The hike into the lower falls is the most popular, as it's the closest at 0.8 miles and then if you want to go on, you can do the upper falls in another mile or just over, making the whole thing a bit over 2 miles round trip, without the ink pots, of course.
The lower falls were discovered by a mountaineer in the late 1800s and he noticed that there was a little area the water had carved into the sandstone cliff that seemed to make a nice viewpoint to the lower falls. He actually loaded up his pick-axe one day and "several hours was all it took" according to the trail sign, to carve the little lookout point over the lower falls. It's accessed by a cave that you enter, then onto that little ledge for a nice close up view of the falls, misting you with their glacial goodness. Nowadays, you know this is the lookout point by the line of people waiting to get into the tunnel. We waited, saw the falls, and headed to the uppers. No time for dallying here, as the crush of people anxious to see, snap shots and move along is immense. (Above pictures are Larry on a catwalk, and a small unmarked fall along the trail).
The
lower falls are in the photo to the left, the pool at the base of them just
didn't show upon film as brilliantly green as it was in real life. The lookout
point is hidden in this view, but it's encased in that rocky outcropping to
the right side of the falls. We snapped our photos and turned around to head
to the upper falls.
Upper falls starts to climb noticeably, and the crowds also thin considerably. There were people (this never ceases to piss me off and daze me at the same time) with baby strollers on the path (yes, paved, but hills and rocky and bumpy and why in the universe would you bring a stroller onto such a crowded narrow pathway you narcissistic snot- a single is bad enough, there were two double wides that I walked past in here). The strollers ceased on the way to the upper falls, probably because of the path and the climbing involved to get to the uppers, and things got twistier and the catwalks ended.
I was breathing kinda heavy as we stopped along the way after a bit of a climb next to a couple who carried their baby on their back (baby was placidly looking around, chilling out, poor dad was getting a serious workout) and took a break. There are black swifts nesting in the cliff faces around this part of the park, difficult and unusual to spot them, but you could see the holes they use as homes in the stone. The sense that you're in a canyon the whole time is hard to escape, you look down the narrow slot to the river bed below, and up and up and up past cliffs to dense forest to the peaks of the mountains just visible at the top of the canyon. It's gorgeous though. And the creek bed is especially beautiful- the water is the crystal-clear glacial freezing usual and the rocks at the bottom of the creek are visible and shimmer a million bright colors: yellow, brown, umber, orange, red, and black.
We got to the upper falls and people were less organized or willing to wait to get to the end of a little catwalk pier past the cliff face so you could actually see them. Larry and I waited our turn, but people were shoving in cutting in front of you. The spot was pretty, but the not very pretty human environment on the pier was irksome enough to disturb my enjoyment.
Falls spotted, Larry and I turned around for the hike back out, too tired for the Ink Pots. The hike out was mostly down hill, so it seemed to go fast. Once back to the car, we drove the remaining 13 kilometers to Banff down the highway, without a single animal spotted.
Upper falls to the right in this photo, the scenery of the Bow River and mountains on highway 1A in the picture to the right.
How to describe Banff? Wow. Larry at one point said "I'm going to need to learn a new language since I think I've exhausted all English adjectives to describe this" (I've stolen his quote a few pages ago) and that's how it is. Surreal, you exit the freeway to get to the town itself and right away you turn onto Banff Avenue, the town's main road. The road is just lined with lodge after lodge after lodge, ours was the Rundlestone and it was walking distance into town, and quite charming. The view is amazing- these boutique shops, lots of people swarming the sidewalks, wide tree-lined medians affording views to the massive snow-covered mountain peaks around you in the distance at every angle. The sun was shining, it was in the upper 70s and I'm not sure the day could have been more perfect for this gorgeous little place.
I drove the car into the underground parking lot of the Rundlestone which had a series of ski lockers in the basement and was eerily devoid of cars... An elevator takes you up one floor from the garage into the lobby which is very lodge-rustic. The mandatory stuffed animals on the walls- birds, deer head, and a massive stone fireplace with a black custom wrought-iron screen proclaiming "Rundlestone Lodge." I checked in with the desk clerk who informed me that I had been upgraded to a kitchenette room. Nice! Room 350 was on the top floor, right across from an elevator and when we opened the door we were greeted with what looked like a little rustic apartment. It's a loft, so you walk into the bottom floor, to the right a bathroom, and most of the living space is a little couch, a tv, a wood-burning fireplace and right in front of you a balcony looking out on to the back of the hotel (not the best view, but you could see the mountains of course). Upstairs is the loft bedroom which is small, but furnished with another tv and a little two-chair seating area. I was thrilled about the fireplace! Jacuzzi, lap pool and workout center were on the 2nd floor but I was ready to forgo hot tubs for the pleasure of a fireplace in my own little apartment in the rockies.
Once inside, you threw stuff down and wanted to get back out again to explore that adorable little town. In one of the tourist brochures I had, there was a wine shop in town somewhere that had tastings that I wanted to check out, hopefully to try some of the Okanagan Valley wines. The bus seemed like the most sensible way to get downtown first- the bus stop was right outside the front doors of the Rundlestone, and there was no scale on the map telling me just how far a walk the town and the shopping area was from the hotel. Bus lines in Banff are not complicated: $2 gets you on (no transfers, so it's $2 each way) and there are two main lines through the town: line1 and line 2. Stops are numbered, we got on at stop #3. My plan was to take the bus all the way down to the river. The Bow River runs perpendicular to the town at its northernmost border, and across a pretty stone bridge is the beautiful gothic-revival architecture of the Town Hall. Larry seemed to be anxious to get off the bus, so we opted to get off at stop #8 which was one stop from the river anways, to start exploring.
The place is bursting with people. And it's a tourist mecca with lots of shops and restaurants from low-end to Louis Vuitton and stores selling furs. (Seriously? You need a license to catch a fish, but you can kill mink for the sake of fashion? Outrageous that furs aren't illegal! I was really upset but these shops are all over Banff).
We strolled along the main drag, found the street that the wine shop was on (Caribou) and went down the stairs into the basement shop to find two guys with immense wine knowledge and a great collection staffing the place. Small, but well laid out and with a terrific collection. They were pouring a taste of a Portuguese blend advertised as a basic table wine for $1. I started wandering around looking at the collection, they have a number of Benziger selections- the Pinot Gris, a Chardonnay, the 2006 estate Cabernet (which is the Imagery Sunny Slope vines, actually and a terrific wine), among others. Large collection. Expensive compared to what these wines go for in CA. Larry said the entire trip "well, it's $26.95 Canadian." and I never seemed to be able to break him of this habit. The US/Can exchange rate is basically 1:1, so with the teeny edge over the Canadian dollar that the US dollar holds, you get back less than you gave with the fees (I changed $300 US and with the $10 fee my $307.56 Canadian was actually $297.56 in my pocket). I remember the days going to Toronto all the time when it was about 1.5:1. Not anymore...
We found some Okanagan and Canadian wines that seemed like good ones to try (Iniskillin is a big producer from Niagara Valley in Ontario- I've been there. Mostly whites, of course with the climate, but they make some award winning late harvest and ice wines). Okanagan reds aren't California reds, but it seemed like I had yet to be disappointed with any of them as far as quality. The pick ended up being a cab/merlot blend that was a winner. Medium bodied, but crisp and grassy on the nose in a very good way. We tried the Portuguese table wine (also pretty good!) and headed out with our purchase. Back on the main drag, we wandered into some of the outfitter shops to browse clothing which was all extremely expensive stuff that you can get in the US. We stopped and checked menus at places we passed by for a dinner spot, and everything was crazy expensive. I wanted a cesar salad and didn't feel like coughing up $22 for it, so we generally kept walking. A small pub, below street level had a whiteboard out front on their small cement patio filled with folks enjoying a beer in the sunshine advertised $7.95 for a sandwich, so we stopped there and found beer and inexpensive pub food, so ducked in there for dinner.
No
matter who much I may want the cesar salad, I look at the menu and get pulled
away to other choices which seem more tempting at the time... I ended up getting
a chicken breast sandwich with avocado and jalapeno slices and salsa. It was
delicious and washed down well with a local Alberta brew the "Traditional
Brown Ale." Larry had a steak sandwich and I watched ESPN longing for hockey
while Larry played on his ipod most of the meal.
Sated and ready to get back to the Rundlestone, we exited the pub and walked back to the lodge along the main street. The clouds were huge puffy cumulus in the sky and several were gathering around the tops of the peaks making for some spectacular scenery for the walk.
We ended up watching tv (one of the Bourne movies was playing) and figuring out how to use the gas-powered wood burning fireplace in the room to make a cozy little blaze while we drank our Okanagan Valley blend.
The only complaint I have with the Rundlestone is nothing they can do anything about: lofts are tricky for sleeping. Heat rises, so it was hot all night and I kept waking up sweating even though the room temperature was as low as it would go. Oh well. I can tough out a little heat for my cozy fireplace :)
Sunday, September 5, 2010: the last day of the trip dawned rainy and overcast. It had rained in the night and there was a light drizzle going on and the temperature a freezing 43 degrees as we drank coffee and futzed around. The Rundlestone has free WiFi, so it was nice to have access to my own email (man that stuff piles up when you're on vacation) so I could stomp out a few school-related fires at the little desk before heading out for more town exploration.
I had leftover chicken sandwich for breakfast (still yummy) and coffee and by 10 or so we were out into the frigid streets of Banff, walking our way from the hotel (probably a bit less than a mile) to the main shopping area of town. The mountains had a fresh dusting of snow on top of them, it fell in the valley as rain but they were saying the snow line was at about 6,000 feet while we were here). The drizzle wasn't so bad, but I didn't have the luxury of wearing flip flops like I did yesterday... We walked all the way through town, over the river and up the road to the Fairmont Hotel Banff Springs. It's this gothic and majestic building that was also built by the Pacific Railway Company along with the grand hotels in Lake Louise and Glacier National Park to house tourists in this "Alps of the West." It's like a massive castle jutting out of the landscape almost as tall as the mountains behind it. It was built at the same time the others were, and underwent re-building in 1927 after the original wood structure was destroyed in a fire with stone and steel into what it is today. This grand palace was a famous place to be in the 1920s-1940s, and it was common to come up for 3-4 moths at a time with a bank check for a $50,000 line of credit which you could live off of for the summer months. Marilyn Monroe, Queen Elizabeth, lots of famous folks have stayed here, golfed, dined, danced and lived a charmed life in the canadian rockies. The 2nd world war ended up closing the hotel down, but it re-opened in 1949 to the public once again. In 1997 it was purchased by the Fairmont chain, had some refurbishing and renovation, and continues to be a tourist mecca today. The bottom floor is even bigger than the Fairmont Lake Louise and has a labyrinth of shops as well as rooms (open to the public) that you can wander through. The ballrooms and sitting rooms are gorgeous, all done in gothic-revival style with tapestries, wood paneling, a faux-stone finish on the interior walls, gothic wooden furniture, it's beautiful. They still have a lot of weddings and big corporate functions here, one of the biggest ballrooms was closed but you could see through the iron screen doors (mille fleur pattern, of course) to the room set up with tables and place settings and buffet tables with real silver and elegant stemware for the "Brazilian Volkswagen" convention.
The
photos above are in the fairmont's ballroom, neo-gothic furniture and sepia-toned
lighting. Gorgeous. There were lots and lots of littler ballrooms off the main
one, but they were all closed.
We spent some time wandering around the public areas of the fairmont, and stumbled across their wine bar- all gothic arches and carved wood paneling on the walls. I loved it. Too bad it was closed (to the left). Very Tudor.
We found our way outside onto the patio, with a view of the Bow River that runs through town and the misty mountains in the background (rain down here, but it was snowing up there and the cloud level was very low) and started to make our way out toward the town. You wind through the complex which is massive, under a gothic arch walkway which reminded me of the one on the campus at Oxford, and saw signs for the shops on the lowest level. We decided it was cold out, rainy and why not?
Peta would be as appalled as I am with Banff- there was another fur shop downstairs in the hotel and I was just as angry walking by it as I was the others. I wish there was some way to outlaw this vicious, vain practice but somehow it still persists. Awful.
I walked past quickly, not wanting to get all the spirits of the slaughtered mink come down on me in the hallway. We came upon a shop full of glass, artifacts and in the corner a whole section of fossils, which of course caught my eye. Fish in sandstone that were millions of years old- amazing. Stuff called "ammolite" they look like nautilus shells. Some of the fossils have been mineralized under pressure so when you cut them open, they are full of iridescent colors a lot like abalone shell. You could buy the whole shells, some were in sandstone, some were cut in half. I was intrigued and got it into my head that a fossil would be very cool souvenir indeed. I hemmed and hawed about bringing that back, especially when I found out the fish I liked so much were probably from utah.
We walked back to town. I wandered into the two fossil shops there, still weighing a fossil purchase that would look way cool with some nice gallery lighting in the little art cubby holes in my entertainment center...
In the end, I didn't make a fossil purchase and went instead with Larry to the safeway on the way back to the hotel and bought supplies for a dinner inside by the fireplace. Salad, brie and bread, tomato and pepper. The Larry Staple. The plan was to get another bottle of Okanagan, but in Canada you need to buy all liquor in a liquor store, they don't sell any at the grocery store. It was cold, drizzly and I didn't feel like walking back to the wine shop, so I went back to the hotel. I nibbled on some lunch, showered and debated about fossils and going back for my souvenir but it was still raining and I didn't want to go back out in the cold rain again. Just as I started to get over the idea of getting a fossil, the sun started shining through the clouds and the day started to look all blue skies and puffy clouds. I made a snap decision to head back out for the fossil.
I went into the one shop that was filled with the most fossils- ammolite of all shapes, sizes and colors, and bought the one fish fossil I liked the most (two fish on a sandstone plate of about 8 inches square), and then asked about the ammolite. The girl working there, in these shiny skin tight little disco pants and pig tails had no clue. No clue about anything I actually wanted to know about. Are they from Alberta? What exactly is the difference between the black ones and the shiny colorful ones? No clue. So I left disco pants after paying for the fossil, and walked across the street to the wine shop, picked up the bottle of Okanagan we opted not to try the first night (cab/merlot blend) and realized disco pants forgot to give me back my credit card. Obviously this would have been a total disaster had I not realized she had it (argh!). So I ran back across the street and her fellow employee said "Oh! Yes, we have it right here!" And pulled it out of the register. Disco pants came by to check a customer out on another purchase and said "I'm so sorry!" It ended just fine- me leaving with my bank card, so all was well that ended well.
Down the street from Disco Pants was a store advertising "Talk to a professional about Real Alberta Ammolite." So in I went. Their selection was much smaller than Disco Pants' selection, but this woman clearly knew what the heck she was selling. They didn't have any pieces that were intact fossils (really, they look like a shiny nautilus) except for one under the front register that she showed me "That's a $5,000 piece" she said. Then she let me know "you can't bring them out of Canada. They're a protected resource, so only the modified ones can leave the country." This made my decision easy then. Next to this intact ammolite was a huge piece of one that feels like a chunk of polished limestone that shimmered and shone in the store lighting. I think we found the piece. In total, I exited Canada with a piece of ammolite, farmed from Fossil mountain right in Banff National Park that is between 70 and 135 million years old, a fossil of fish from Utah that is probably 35 million years old, and a piece of real rock I illegally pilfered from banff myself in a used hiking sock. (Oh, the shame. I'm really amazed I had the chutzpah to actually do that, it's literally illegal. And man, it would piss me off if anyone else did it).
That evening, we had some drinks in the hotel's bar before dinner- a glass of house wine, and a "manhattan" that the bartender had forgotten how to make (no, he admitted that himself) and then proceeded to pour one single shot of bourbon into a glass that was not a rocks glass, not a shot glass, but something between with several ice cubes inside, along with a dash of sweet vermouth and the bitters I asked for before adding a cherry and handing us our "manhattans." We both shared a look before basically trying to sip something that was essentially just a shot of bourbon. You can't actually correct a bartender, can you? I was a bit outraged that I was going to be charged hotel lobby bar prices for this not-a-manhattan-manhattan, but we kept our opinions to ourselves, shaking our heads at foreign makers of american drinks... the "martini" we ordered in Paris that wasn't even recognizable, and now this "manhattan" in Banff. We took our wine back to the room, got a DVD of The Edge from the front desk staff and headed in for dinner by the fireplace with a scary movie.
The
Edge is a movie with Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins (and Elle Macpherson,
of all people) of a film crew who come up to Alaska to film a commercial that
stars Elle Macpherson in Eskimo tribal dress wildly skimpified into teeny skirt
and feathers in her braided hair, when a small plane they were taking to a remote
island to scout a spot that might be better for filming goes down into a glacial
lake. In the ensuing madness, Alec Baldwin the Movie Producer who is screwing
Elle Macpherson behind Anthony Hopkins her professorial husband's back and a
sidekick who is, of course, the first to die. They have to survive in the outback
with basically nothing- and then find out very soon that a grizzly bear is actually
stalking them. There was no way in the known world I would have watched this
before hiking- but it was okay now that it was our last night in the wilderness
to freak myself out a bit. Grizzly bear are actually known to (however rarely)
HUNT human beings. So there is the possibility of truth in this type of encounter,
and little hope for you if that happens to you. The camera guy dies first, eaten
and bleeding out of a massive leg wound by the bear. The bear then chases Hopkins
and Baldwin through the woods, ends up killing Baldwin after all, who apologizes
to Hopkins for sleeping with his wife before he croaks, then Hopkins manages
to flag down a plane passing by looking for the missing men, and gets rescued.
The End.
We ate brie on warm multi-grain bread, drank our Okanagan blend (another good one!) and cozied up in the Banff night chill by the fire.
Monday, September 6, 2010: The last day dawned cold but bright. In the morning Larry and I went out in search of breakfast. Most places were closed, it was only 8am, but they also seem to celebrate Labor Day in Canada (spelled Labour, of course) so a lot of businesses were closed for the holiday. Along a nice little side street was the Coyote Cafe where we decided to have our last Canadian meal. My breakfast of huevos rancheros was decent, but Larry had this stuffed French Toast that was delicious. Two huge pieces, one stuffed with ham and swiss, the other with strawberries and cream cheese (I liked the fruit one best).
Having spent our last Canadian dollars, we headed back to the Rundlestone in the cold gorgeous morning, admiring the view of the misty mountains all around us before checking out, packing our stuff into the Versa and driving the hour and a half back to Calgary. By 2pm, we were back in the Bay Area and I think happy to be home at last.
