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Calgary, AB → Banff, AB 193.0 km (119.9 mi) |
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Nice to YYC you, everyone!
Westjet canceled my original flight from Kelowna back to Calgary! I’d picked a very sensible 10:00 AM departure to rendezvous with my friends by 12:30, but after the strike back in July, canceling 832 flights, I was stuck with a 7:00 AM departure. Ugh! Well, that meant I wouldn’t have to rush from gate to gate in YYC while I waited for my friends, Ross and Terri, to land so we could rent an RV and go cruise the Canadian Rockies. Did you know that all of Canada’s major commercial airports have a code that starts with the letter Y? That’s because, starting in the 1930s, Canadian airports would put a “Y” in front of their name to show that Yes, they had a weather station onsite!
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Once reunited, the three of us caught an Uber over to CanaDream, where we gathered up a motorhome and heaps of Costco groceries, then headed off into the mountains! Kind of like Denver, Calgary is situated on the easternmost flank of the Rocky Mountains, making it the perfect jumping off point for high altitude adventures! With some concerns about the wildfire-choked air, and a whole lot of confusion over identically named campgrounds, we finally pulled in to the Bow River Campground to make some pasta on Night 1.
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Once we settled, it sure was nice to take a breather after all the flying and splashing around the last few days. Our campsite was really close to the Bow River, which offered up some fine views of the surrounding mountains. This range is chock-full of national parks, so full, in fact, that it’s honored by UNESCO! Think that’s cool? Well, the symbol of Canada’s national parks is… a beaver. This beaver was just itching for adventure, though that could have also been from the mosquitoes.
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Though the first day of our adventure was pretty utilitarian, our second day dawned bright and shiny. Today, we were going to stretch our legs by renting some e-bikes from Pedego Electric Bikes Canmore, something I’d never done before! Unlike regular bikes, these ones have buttons that give you an electrical boost when you need it, and I suspected I’d need it on the 26.8-kilometer Legacy Trail connecting Canmore with Banff! Biking this trail is a super popular activity. How popular, you ask? Well, the sign at the trailhead counted folks as they passed! 186 bikers had already beaten us to the trail today, with 65,362 riding the Legacy Trail this year! Well, there was no point in dawdling and looking at numbers. There was wild beauty to experience!
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The first half of the trail was just magnificent! Even though it skirted the high-fenced highway, which took away some sense of wildness but kept the deer and bears from becoming roadkill, the trail was surrounded on both sides by summer flowers and absolutely enormous, rocky peaks! We stopped at the Valleyview pullout to get a closer look at Mount Rundle, lined by signs warning about bears foraging for berries! Even though this mountain range is called the Canadian Rockies, it’s not the same as the ones south of the border. They’re actually made up of mostly sedimentary rock, unlike the southern Rockies, which are igneous and metamorphic! But gosh, I couldn’t help but gawk at the natural sculpting! (I hope the peaks didn’t mind…)
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Another twenty minutes of riding, and I just had to call out a time-out. Cascade Mountain was up ahead, reflected magnificently in a little stream off the side of the trail, just as that trail was nearing its final left turn into the range’s most famous town: Banff. After enjoying the view, we got back on our bikes and followed our hunger into Banff, crossing some surprising animal barriers. They were electrified, designed to zap any bare-footed (or bear-footed) critter trying to cross them! I sure was glad to be on a bike, because my toes might never have recovered!
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Banff is a funny-sounding name, which I thought must have been German, but it’s actually named for Banff, Scotland, where George Stephen, president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, was born! Railroad workers found a huge hot spring here, and from that hot spring rose both the town of Banff and Canada’s very first national park in 1887! A tourist destination from inception, downtown Banff was super crowded with shoppers and recreators, making i hard to find a place to lock up our bikes. After a trekking around town, we chained them to some posts in an alley and dipped into The Grizzly House, western Canada’s first disco when it opened in 1967, now a fine place (if dimly lit) to enjoy lunch cooked on a blazing hot stone!
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After lunch, we strolled and shopped for a bit, treating ourselves to those tasty Canadian treats, Beaver Tails (not made from actual beaver), until it was nearly time to return our bikes before the shop closed at 5:00 PM. With some blustery gusts warning us about rain, we nevertheless took a moment to pause at Cascade Ponds for one last peek at the peak of Cascade Mountain! The water in the pond was emerald green, a great preview of waters to come, so even though we couldn’t linger here for very long, I knew there would be plenty more beautiful sights up ahead!
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After dropping off the bikes right on time, we hopped back in the motorhome and went right back the way we’d come, by highway this time, which was much faster. We turned off on Tunnel Mountain Road, just ahead of town, to wind upward toward our second campsite. What we got was more of a parking lot than a campground, which we should have guessed from the name “Tunnel Mountain Trailer Court,” but we made the most of it. Hand-assembled charcuterie by the fire with a mountain view sure hits the spot!
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This is shaping up to be a really easygoing trip, but maybe that’s because I’m not doing the driving or the planning! Instead, deferring responsibility is giving me time to really focus on enjoying the natural beauty instead of staring at my GPS map for what comes next. Maybe this is how trips will be in the future when my quests come to a close? Gosh, that could be soon.
I’ll be Banff!
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Total Ground Covered: 273.8 km (170.1 mi) |
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