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 157mins 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 some of this up over lunch, 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 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 hair 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..*

Ok where was I? Yes , Natural Bridge..ahh it was lovely there, really quite fascinating to see how the bridge had ended up forming by the erosive forces of rushing water, by what would have once been a waterfall. The softer rock below the hard limestone top eroded more quickly creating the hole (yes we have researches it!!) 

We reckon you could actually walk (with probably a jump) over it but it would have been risky as hell.

From here we went to a little town nearby called Field where I knew there was a highly recommended restaurant called The Truffle Pig where we could get lunch. We had a short wait as this is the only place for actual MILES to get lunch. 

Despite its name it had a great choice of vegetarian food and so we filled ourselves up there and headed back off. 

Next and last stop on today’s itinerary was Takkakaw Falls. 

Jaysus the drive up to that was precarious. There was this one turn where you LITERALLY turned back on yourself whilst going up a very steep hill and had other cars trying to get round it from the other direction. It took me 3 attempts as I had to keep backing up to allow the other cars to get round me as I couldn’t get enough swing whilst they were there. What got me was we saw bloody coaches coming up here! 

Finally made it to the top and after a short walk we found the waterfall. It was fabulous and came from so high up - apparently it runs off a glacier that’s up over the top of the mountain. I imagine they are utterly spectacular when there’s even more water flowing.

I think Multnomah Falls in the states that we saw on our last road trip pipped this one though as Dan said, this place sure makes Malham Cove look tiny!! 

The place was swarming with other tourists - this is all to be expected as we are doing a very well know tourist route. I saw the same couple at each place we went to!  Though not at lunch!  

From here we piled back in the car and headed back to Banff. The sun was still shining over Banff National Park so it was lovely to get back to that. 

We showered/ got changed and had a re-org of the packing as this is our last day here 😞.

We’ve really loved Banff. The town itself is mayhem as there’s so many other tourists here but it’s a great vibe and a stunning setting. I shall miss the amazing views around every corner.

When we were ready we headed out for a walk down the river to Bow Falls. I’d wanted to do this on the day we arrived but it was p*ssing down that day and was getting dark. 

What a beautiful walk it was along the river with the sun starting to set. A great way to end the day. 

The falls were great and worth the extra walk even though we were feeling tired. 

We then headed into Downtown for some very well earned beers. We’d clocked up about 8.5 miles over the day but they were not necessarily easy miles. And walking about at this altitude is just that bit harder really. 

We went back to Banff St Brewing and saw the Australian guy that works there (think he’s the manager) again. He recognised us instantly and rushed over with a warm hello and to ask about our day. 

We also returned the, thankfully unused Bear Spray and wandered over to Bear St brewing for a swift one before going for food at Bear St Social! 

I had a fabulous tomato soup and grilled cheese in there 😋.

So there we were just chilling and chatting at the bar when the bar manager marches over with half a glass of something and asks us to try it (on the house) as it was a new cocktail he was developing for winter. He asked what we thought and Dan lived it but I found it a bit too sweet and it wintery enough! He agreed and said he was going to work on getting some ginger into it which I wholeheartedly agreed with! 

Then they come along with ‘do you like Negroni’s’?? 

‘Love them’ was my reply. ‘Try this one, it’s made with a pomegranate and sage gin I’ve just procured and I need to find a way to use it’ .. another half glass full of cocktail…it was delicious and I told him he needed to change nothing! 

THEN little shot glasses of another new cocktail arrived that he was developing which he wanted to showcase sumac in. ‘Not enough in it’ I said.. He agreed.. 

Went off, added more and came back with another version!! That was much better and as I knew he wanted the main syrup featuring the sumac, to develop overnight I told him not to add more.

He agreed again!! 

So now I’m a cocktail development taster it appears 😂😂. 

Well we were a tad tipsy after all that and we’d only had about 3 drinks of our own! 

We pottered off for one last one as it was our last night but we struggled through that and came back to do final pack and prep for the next leg of our trip which is Jasper.

We get to travel the full Icefields Parkway now and also, the car goes back when we get to Jasper so there will be no more driving for me…

I will be putting myself in the hands of a tour guide next!!