For the start of our second and only full day of camping, we got right to it. I was up first, as always, so I made breakfast. Chad refused to get out of the tent so I had to eat his breakfast for him. Eventually he emerged and made a new breakfast for himself. Breakfast leads to dishes so we trekked on over to the sink to clean up. With everything clean and put away we took ourselves on an impromptu pajama-clad walk.
With only a short bit of walking, the stream running through the campground revealed it's true colours. It's actually a small river. And when we hit the end of the trail, we found that the river has a rather large waterfall. I love waterfalls. My favorite campground is on a river/fall so this made for a nice little discovery.
A short trek "back" and we came out on the highway instead of in our camp. Fortunately the entrance to the camp ground was just up the road.
After getting dressed and ready we decided to head out.
<--- Banff
Lake Lousie --->
Lake Louise won out and the battle began. I say battle because there are even more tourists in LL than in Banff and none of them know how to drive or where they are going. It's necessary to fight through. Or be the bigger person and park far away and walk in, which is what we did.
I wanted to go see the actual lake and the Chateau so we walked about a mile to get there. It's quite beautiful, but next to impossible to take a picture without a bunch of other people in the background. We took a little walk around inside the Chateau to check out the shops and restaurants but didn't go into any. Back outside we walked around the lake a bit before deciding we would do a hike up the mountain. If you make the long walk up you will find a tea house. We saw one sign that said it was a 7 mile hike and another that said 3.6 miles. We chose to believe the latter. Jokes on us. What goes up must come down. It's a 7 mile hike.
On the way to the tea house we continually considered turning around. We weren't super prepared to walk that far and the trail has quite an incline. I could feel the incline in all my butt muscles the next day. There are 2 other lakes so see on the hike. Mirror lake is halfway up and Lake Agnes is at the top beside the tea house.
Eventually, we made it. The tea house is old and rustic and adorable and sits right at the top of a waterfall. It has an amazing view, and pretty darn good lemon poppyseed loaf.
We sat long enough to get really good and rained on, chatted a bit with another couple and watched the bravest squirrel jumping on people's laps and getting in their food.
Going back down the mountain was infinitely easier and faster and it was so satisfying to reach the warmth and flat paths at the bottom. From there we had another mile to get back to the truck. An afternoon well spent.
Unfortunately, lemon poppyseed loaf does little to fuel me from a 9 mile hike so it was back to camp for lunch and a tiny nap.
The last thing we did was go to Banff Upper Hot Springs. Quite crowded and at +40, a little hot for my liking, but very soothing after our earlier hike. Chad could have stayed for hours, but I eventually convinced him it was time to go.
Another short walk around town, some more food and back to the camp for a fire. The fire was very short lived though because of an 11pm fire curfew.. Not cool.
And that was it. Day 3 was the pack-up, drive home and laundry day.
Until next time
xoxo
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