No Monday morning moans here!

 Oh man alive I slept so well last night - even on the lumpy rucksack pillow! Guess the days events properly wore me out!! 

I swear I even woke up at one point to congratulate myself about how comfy I was and what a great sleep I was having 😂

Also, what I didn’t mention yesterday is that we’re quite near a train track and the trains like to parp parp their horns (or whatever they are) like every 45 seconds! 

Well of course that’s ok is a wild exaggeration as the trains here are SO long they take about 1.57mins to go past!! 

And boy has Dan got excited every time we’ve been in the vicinity of a train. He tried counting the carriages one time. Got bored - or confused- at around 18 I think. (But then , as I’ve just found out whilst writing this up, he didn’t even bloody know what town he was in - thought we were somewhere called Smile.. 

We were in ‘Field’… 

I give up! )

How funny though that the trains don’t flipping wake him up at night while we’re here …mind I think I could do without that. He’d be out of bed, falling over to find his glasses, then his phone and then all lights would be on whilst he tore the curtains back to get a photo!! 

Anyway I digress, as always, so it was quick get up and go and a repeated breakfast wrap for us (well they are bloody delicious) and we were off. No petrol station sandwiches today though (strangely slightly sad about that!) as I had already earmarked a place we could go for lunch. 

So off to Yoho national Park we headed. 

It was starting to get sunny in Banff but as we headed further out it turned more to cloudy skies and the temperature dipped.

We went straight to Emerald Lake and managed to fairly easily find a parking spot… F me it was baltic when we got out of the car!! 

Extra layers thrown on and we were off on our hike.

Emerald lake was my personal big hit list item. Way over seeing Lake Louise and Moraine Lake to be honest. 

And it did not disappoint. It was not as busy either and it was possible to get a canoe fairly quickly- which we swerved as we were FAR too cold at this point!

So we just set off on our hike. Oh it was glorious! The lake is just as the name says - Emerald Green. Though i imagine with more sun it would have been off the scale in its colour. 

You can stay here and there’s a few lovely looking little lodges all with little log huts outside for your log fire. 

Dan said ‘why didn’t we think of staying here’…. My answer ‘cos you only like staying near a pub or bar’!  

‘Oh I’m sure there’s a bar here somewhere’ he replies.. ‘doubt it’ I say, ‘you’re meant to embrace being out in the middle of nowhere and bring your own in if you want it. I would love this, as would you, for a night or two’… 

‘hmmmm…LOOK there’s the bar’ 

I roll my eyes heavily!! 

The trail took us close to the lake edge but through the forest too.

It was just magical- my kind of walk (though I’d have love me a bit more of an uphill kind of hike) and definitely Dan’s too. 

Lots of areas to wander off into but we were very much on bear watch. Especially Dan. I swear he saw something about a bear at every turn! It was so funny.. 

‘Look that’s where the bear has scratched himself’ …’look that’s where the bear comes chubbing down to the water to catch fish’ 

‘Look that’s a fish head that has been discarded by a bear’… proper peeing myself at him!

And then we came across this… 

And so yes, question answered… they do!! 

Dan even researched it and apparently it looks just like this so yeah, this is, so far, the closest we have come to a bear!! 

More Emerald Lake photos -

They do these places so well planned out and most have washrooms (have to remember not to be asking where the ‘loo’ is here..’blank stares ahoy’) but still,  calling them washrooms is till a push..

 They’re just raised up pits with a loo seat and no flush (that said, it’s still massively better than wild weeing in Bear and mating Elk country!!) - kind of like a very posh version of the one in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’! 

It’s about a 5-6K hike round the lake and before we knew it we were back at the start. Warmed up we reconsidered the canoeing and decided that  whilst Dan would love it, I would be bored after about 34 wafts of the oars, so it wasn’t worth it!

Oh I forgot to mention the weird dark brown air like clumps we kept seeing sporadically on the path. Dan instantly named it as bear fur which I just laughed at and said it must be something off the trees or such like. 

‘Pick some up and smell it, bet it smells like bears’ the PHD awarded Dr Metcalf challenged!!

🤦🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

Got to admit a bit later I did pick some up - but I DID NOT SMELL IT!!

  I checked what it felt like …I have to admit, I can’t see how it could have been anything other than bloody bear fur 🙄🤣! 

From Emerald Lake we headed to ‘Natural Bridge’ which was on the same route in, about 6km away. 

This is a quick stop really but absolutely worth it. 

* Ok this is part one done… am super tired now so am going to finish the rest of this in the morning *