Now before we get to Banff, here’s a little lake area that we found. Quite spectacular.

Now onto Banff. This place is possibly the prettiest, most beautiful little town I have ever seen. A quaint community surrounded by massive picturesque mountains.

Since it was a bit of a ski-lodge town we went cheap at one of the local backpackers, which wasn’t so bad. Strangely it was full of Australians. I mean FULL of Australians & kinda disorienting to hear the accent all night, all the way out there so far from home. Also one of those times I wish I wasn’t Aussie. They were a rowdy drunken bunch compared to the other lodgers & a touch embarrassing to be honest.

Outside the backpackers Banff is nothing but stunning.

Really, I can’t stop talking about Banff once you start me off. Such a beautiful town, full of cute little stores, outdoor adventure shops & more specialty chocolate stores & maple syrup than I’ve ever seen. If I could live anywhere in the whole world it would be Banff. No doubt about it, hands down my ideal town. If I get rich one day I’m moving there in a heartbeat.

(You’ll notice a lot of our photos from the car have these horrible stripes. That is our dodgy windscreen covered in scratches )

Banff is also awesome for its proximity to the ski-fields & my new favourite place on earth, Lake Louise.

We drove up there late one afternoon & I just fell in love. I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t really put it into words, it’s just stunning. A big lake is near the top of a mountain, almost in a crater-like shape with a massive glacier towering over the top & mountains on each side.

It was snowing lightly & the clouds were hiding the white glacier. This sight is just massive, kinda hard to understand the scale of it. When the glacier cracks & falls down the mountain it takes 20 seconds for the sound to reach the other side of the lake where we were. Unfortunately it was absolutely freezing as the sun was setting, not good conditions & I was seriously under-dressed for the snow. Also, Converse All Stars do not fair well on ice. I was sliding all over the place.

Now, I actually skipped something there. Before we got up to Lake Louise we took a turn off that ended up leading us to a short wildlife hike in the early afternoon.

It went through the forest where you would go to see wolves & bears, but we didn’t see any wildlife until the end, the forest opened up to a lake area where we saw the amazing sight of a large herd (?) of wild caribou hanging out & eating by the water.

There were over 20 of them, all female (from what I could tell) apart from one big male with huge antlers. What an incredible thing to see.

Since it was such a short, unprepared visit to Lake Louise we were keen to go back again the next morning before heading east on our journey. After a night at the backpackers we went straight back up there, more clothing layers, cameras charged, hoping for a clearer day & better weather.

We had perfect conditions. You can now see the top of the glacier & really understand the incredible size of it all.

We followed one of the trails around the right side of the lake & went the whole way around to the other side, right below the glacier.

The edge of the lake was just starting to freeze over for the winter. The whole lake will be solid ice in a couple of months-

A little squirrel on the way (no, we didn’t give him the cracker).

Look at the size of those walls! Try to picture a little dude standing next to one of the big pine trees up top. The trees look tiny from down here.

Wow, what an experience. Walking on the crunchy snow, on the other side of the lake looking back at where we started was incredible. The massive chateau by the lake was perfectly framed. It’s my dream to one day stay there.

Not a brilliant picture of me, but this photo was taken just as a huge “crack” was heard on the mountainside behind me & I turned around just in time to see a bunch of big icicles fall. That definitely woke me up! What a sight!

Nik broke off a plate of ice from the side of the lake. It sounded just like glass.

Look at that blue water behind.

So, after that we continued east. We ended up sleeping in the car the night in a campground in Brooks. So cold, but at least we had electricity at that camp for our laptops. That was our first night in the car.

From there we drove on to Regina & spent a while driving around exploring. There wasn’t too much to see really. A pretty town but not as big as I thought it would be, & we ended up backtracking to Moosejaw for a campground to sleep in. The campground was deserted apart from deer. Some of these places were a little creepy to be honest. They had the atmosphere of an old fairground or something. There were themed mini golf parks & holiday activities, all closed & empty, borders up on the windows, skeleton-trees, grey skies & not a soul in sight. Very eery. It didn’t help that Nik played the Twin Peaks soundtrack in the car one night.

Onwards east to Echo Valley, another night in a campground.

Onwards east again, we do a long drive over to Winnipeg. Once again we do a night in the car, but this time in the carpark of a Flying J just out of town. These places are a freaking godsend when you’re on the road, massive truckstops with great traveler facilities. We use the rent-a-showers & kill a few hours in the lounge with the free wireless & pizza while our clothes are in the laundromat. After that we joined the truckers & RVs by sleeping in the carpark. We’re getting pros by this stage but still a little chilly in our drafty old car. Next time we do a trip like this we’re getting a minivan, power inverter & gonna do it right. Having the steering wheel squishing your legs while you sleep is quite uncomfortable. I could have so much fun pimping out a van as a portable studio apartment. One day..

We actually had a change of plans around this point & decided to head south instead of continuing east to Toronto. We tried our luck with US border patrol to see if they’d grant us another 90 day visa waiver. To my surprise the US lets us in with little fuss! Well, I say little fuss but that includes a full car search & quick interrogation. It was pretty interesting watching them do a car search on the person ahead of us in the queue, with a little remote control camera going through the car paneling like an auto-colonoscopy. They’re pretty thorough, I’ll say that.

So, my next post will be back below the border, in the ol’ US of A.

Stay tuned.