Once our little family had settled down into our new home…well as settled as we could be, it was time to decide on our first outing. In truth it was an easy decision, being this close to the mountains we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to head to Banff. Luckily it was a rather quick car ride, just over an hour, which was a whole lot less than our ride to Calgary.
We packed up the kids shortly after breakfast and headed out. We had an audio book playing, making for a rather uneventful car trip (my favourite kind) and we waited for the mountains to come into view. It wasn’t the greatest of weekends to be heading to Banff, it was cloudy and a tiny bit snowy, but we went anyway.
The kids and I had never been to Banff, I was excited to see the mountains (I’m sure the kids would have been if they knew what to expect) and I was not disappointed. It was awesome just to see the kids faces light up as soon as the mountains came into view. Pretty sure that all of us were staring out the windows like a car full of tourists, we didn’t even try to play it cool.
As we entered Banff, after purchasing our Park Parking pass, I was impressed with the town. Everything had been designed for tourism. Every building and restaurant had the same look and theme, like they had all been built by the same person. It was a very impressive thing to see and it all seemed to be cohesive with the landscape that surrounds Banff. Once we purchased our Gondola tickets we went back down to the town to explore a little, hoping that the clouds would dissipate enough to give us a good view from the top. There were a couple museums and other tourist attractions that we missed out on, but we did have a look at the shops and browsed a little bit. Just before lunch we headed back up to the Banff Gondola to hitch a ride on a cable car up into the clouds.
I couldn’t even put into words the enormity of the mountains as we began our ascent; it’s like being in an airplane and seeing little ant people and their ant size houses, but the mountains are still towering around you on all sides. It’s breath taking and frighteningly beautiful. It is something I can’t wait to see again…hopefully with a little less cloud cover and a whole lot less cold.
It was definitely a good thing that we wore warm clothes because there was nothing warm about the top of Sulphur Mountain. There was wind and snow, there were clouds and cold. Even with all that against us we set off on the boardwalk to Sanson’s Peak. The views were mostly obscured by clouds, but we still got to see a fair amount. Our poor little guy was a bit tired and his toes were a bit cold when we decided it was time to head back down the mountain, and the other two kids were getting a little hungry.
Even though we missed out on the Hot Springs and some of the other things Banff has to offer we didn’t mind too much since we can always go back another time and I foresee us doing just that. If you’ve ever been to Banff what do you recommend we check out?
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