Originally Posted by parisdisneyfan
Hope you are enjoying Banff, we arrive on Thursday  Any tips so far? See more... |
Hi Julia,
It’ll be lovely to spend such a long time using Banff as a base. Get used to photographing lots of mountains and lakes - one photo is never enough!
When you’re up early for the time difference, get to Moraine Lake early before they shut the road. Either that or go later in the evening (we went at about 5:15 pm and got lucky as they were just opening the road again, although they did shut it again shortly afterwards). I absolutely loved it there. If you follow the path behind the rock pile, you can get up to some lookouts there - the height seems to really make the colours of the lake more spectacular. It wasn’t very busy there at that time either, which made it more enjoyable.
I think the colours of Moraine Lake have been my favourite, but Lake Louise, Emerald Lake and Peyto Lake have all been stunning too. We’re not big hikers, but have enjoyed lakeside trails at both Lake Louise and Emerald Lake.
One of the favourite things we’ve enjoyed is the Maligne Lake cruise to Spirit Island, but not sure if you’re going that far. We also did the Lake Minnewanka boat trip, and while there was nothing wrong with it, I did prefer the other one. Perhaps if I hadn’t have done the Maligne Lake one first, I may have felt differently.
We’ve found the GyPSy apps bundle for the Canadian Rockies well worth the £14.99 it cost us, but the best one of the four was the Icefields Parkway one - you can buy it separately rather than in the bundle with Lake Louise, Jasper and Banff apps if you’d rather. It lets you know all the places to stop along the way, and works on GPS, so doesn’t cost any of your data - not that you’ll have phone signal along there anyway.
Make sure you’ve got layers - the weather can change very quickly. It was 5 degrees when we left the hotel this morning, but got up to 27 degrees this afternoon. Showers can appear very suddenly too, so my umbrella was always in the rucksack along with a hoodie.
I’m sure there’s more, but I’ll add to this post when I think of things.