Banff Springs Hotel

The drive back was dark and wet. The afternoon had been a steadily increasing rain, and it had been nice enough to wait for us to come off the ice before it really let go. The drive south in the downpour was the worst driving conditions of the trip. It seems that every trip I’ve ever been on, has had that one day of torrential rain. But look at what all we had done that rainy day and I can’t complain. We got back to Lake Louise Village and went in a fairly nice restaurant and ended the day with a good meal. In hind sight, we probably should have just grabbed something on the go, this was Wednesday night and my last shower had been Sunday in North Dakota and Dave’s had been Saturday morning in Indiana. No wonder they put us far away from the rest of the customers.
There is nothing like sleeping in a tent during a rainy night. Not a storm, just that gentle steady rain drumming on the rain fly of your tent, I sometimes suffer from insomnia, but never in a tent. There were two more must see places on THE SCHEDULE and one day to see them in.
Thursday was our last day in the park. When we left that evening after sunset, it was nothing but road time till we got home. And we enjoyed that last day.
We were waiting on the sun at Lake Moraine. The Valley of Ten Peaks sets just south of Lake Louise and I wish we would’ve gone there sooner and more often. A glacial lake of electric blue that is bracketed by... you guessed it... ten peaks. The morning was cloudy and not the great kind that we had at Lake Louise the day before. I wanted the sunrise that we had in Glacier National that morning, to see the peaks set a blaze by that early morning sun. But we just got teased. When I return to Banff (and I will), I will make it a point to see Lake Moraine several times, at different times of day, and photograph them all. We were there about a hour and a half, and while the photos weren’t that great, the scene was.
We had one last must see in the park before it was time to go. Sulfur Mountain sits in the south west corner of the town of Banff, and that’s where we headed.
We had seen enough elk to make our own herd, but when they are five feet from the road, you still stop and get pictures. We were on the parkway and a few cars were pulled over and a few elk were casually grazing five feet from the tourists, so we joined them. They are quite impressive creatures up close. We stood watching them for a few minutes, and a girl that was solo biking through the park was there with the small crowd. She was attractive and right in front of Dave, Dave says, looming over her, “Damn, you got pretty eyes”.  Any pleasantness she had shown us before was gone, she got on her bike and left, quickly.
After wandering around the town of Banff, seeing the hoodoos, and old hotels that first opened the area 100 years before and the elk that wandered the city streets, we got to the base of Sulfur Mountain. It had been an exhausting week, my shins hurt and the thought of a two hour hike straight up, was depressing the hell out of me. They have a gondola service to the top, and we took it.