Sharp's Travels

Our day started early. Gay was up at 4am. I was awake and got up about 4:30am. At 5am we went in town to the internet hot spot to upload pictures for the last 2 days blogs. We sat outside the café in the truck. We plugged the computer into the inverter in the truck. It took about 1 hour to update everything.

We headed back to the 5th wheel, had a cup of coffee and a nap!

At 10am we were ready to take Rt. 1A back to Lake Louise. We wanted to check out some of the attractions we missed on our way to Banff. The parking lot for Johnston Canyon was full yesterday. The cars were even parked out on the highway.

We arrived at Johnston Canyon around 10:30am. We were lucky enough to get a parking spot in the lot. There were tons of cars parked out on the highway again today.

It was a ½ hour walk into the lower falls. It was a paved trail with catwalks that clung to the sides of the canyon walls. The water was so clear and that pretty turquoise color. The falls are a mere 20 feet across at some points along the trails. When you got to the lower falls there was a bridge to cross and you went into a cave and out on the other side close enough to the falls to feel the spray from the water as it rushed over the rock cliff. The closeness to the pounding water was magnificent.

We headed on to the upper falls. That was another hour hike. We climbed up the paths, which winds through the pine, spruce and Douglas fir and onto more catwalks to an impressive site. The upper falls were 100 feet high. It was beautiful. It had high weeping canyon walls to one side. WOW!

The walk down went a litter easier. There wasn’t all that climbing to do. We stopped at the ice cream booth for a treat when we got back down.

We drove on up to Lake Louise. Once more, we were lucky to get a parking place pretty close to the lake. The view from the lakeshore is known the world over. Melting glacier silt creates the striking turquoise color of the lake and keeps it at a frigid temperature year-round. There was a big crowd there. Lots of them rented canoes to paddle the lake.

We decided also to check out Moraine Lake. We drove up a steep, winding road and again when we reached the lake cars were parked all along the road. We drove up into the parking lot and were lucky, for the third time today, to get a spot where someone had just pulled out.

Moraine Lake is also quite famous, in that an image of the valley of the ten peaks, surrounding the lake, appears on the back of the older versions of the Canadian $20 bill. All the peaks are white capped with the remains of the Wenkchemma Glacier. The huge mountain to the north, with the glacier on its summit, is Mount Temple, at 11,636 ft., the third highest mountain in Banff National Park.

To us, this was far prettier than Lake Louise. Seeing the mountain peaks towering over the beautiful turquoise lake was stunning. We walked around the edge of the lake, in and out through the trees. We were glad we decided to check this one out.

It was time to head home. We took Hwy 1 back to Banff. The sides of the highway were lined with tall fences. They had 2 land bridges that spanned the highway for the animals to use to cross over the road. They were covered with grass and trees. They were in the process of doing another one. They had two 15ft high X 150ft long culverts that spanned each side of the 4 lane interstate. They were pretty neat looking.

We arrived back at the 5th wheel about 5:30pm.

For pictures of the day see album: Banff 8-24-08