Banff Springs Hotel

I felt like a cheat, one of the lazy tourists who come to the park to see it through a car window. But more importantly I felt relaxed and intelligent. In a few minutes, we were on the ridge at the top. The views were unobstructed for as far as the eye could see. We walked around the railed viewing platforms and then took off south along the ridge to the undeveloped sections. The crowds can really spoil a place for me and after the week we had had I wasn’t going to let that happen. The cloud cover from that morning had blown off and the sky was blue with big puffy clouds, picture perfect. We stayed quite a while sitting on a ledge and watching the shadows play over the land.
On the way up, Dave and I had a gondola car to ourselves. We had room to spread out a little and keep our distance, that was not the case on the way down. We were packed into a car with a German couple. Dave and I were both sitting facing out our respective windows breathing the fresh air. Dave made a few attempts at conversation with the couple and it was soon clear that they either did not speak any english, or did not want to speak to us. After that was established, Dave turns to me and says. “I can smell my own crotch.” The ride down was very long.
At the bottom, we made the best choice. The Banff Hot Springs are very near the gondola. The natural hot springs are fed into a modest sized swimming pool, creating a twenty by forty foot hot tub. The temperature hoovers around 100 degrees, and after the week we had, it felt great.
It’s set up like a public pool. You pay your fee, go into the locker room to change, rinse off in the shower, and hit the pool. Remember the last time Dave and I had seen showers. We didn’t bathe there (but we should have), just a quick rinse to dilute the stench.
Everyone we saw in Canada looked like an extra in a Latter Day Saints ad, so when Dave and I hit the pool, parents were actually taking their kids to the other side, and in some cases leaving. Dave’s head had stubbled up, but he was still bald, with a huge goatee and an ear ring and a nipple ring buried not quite deep enough in the hair on his chest (and back). That was one of maybe a dozen times I had been outside without long pants and a shirt in the past ten years. I glow in the dark. My hair was out of the ponytail and laying across my back and shoulders and if my kids had been there I probably would have taken them to the other side of the pool too. It was crowded along the edge when we got there, but by the time we got in, we had no problem getting the best spot in the pool and room to spread out.
The hot water felt great. The days of strenuous hiking and endless driving just melted away. Sometimes the schedule must be flexible. This was something that I wouldn’t have planned to do, because it was time that we could’ve been hiking or driving or planning, and instead we were sitting and doing a whole lot of smiling. Which added to the general unease of the others. We stayed entirely too long, and it felt entirely too good. The trip really ended then and there.
But there was still day light when we left so we went hunting for a sunset place. We tried the lakes at the western edge of town and hung out for a while and had a sandwich, saw more elk, and left. There was a place up the side of a mountain that was supposed to be good for viewing big horn sheep, if the road had been open by the time we made it up there, it might have been. So we sat on a near deserted hill side and watched the sunset. After the hot springs, we’re damn lucky we didn’t sleep there.