Canada - May you said, oh yeah!- June 1st Over too quickly :(

[parisdisneyfan]

We woke to a beautiful last day. All our packing was done, courtesy of the rainy afternoon yesterday. I went down and got breakfast from the Blackdog Cafe at the resort. This is a very cute and friendly little place with homemade food, not a lot of choice and a bit pricey but good for convenience once or twice. We had to be out by 11, then were free until 5.30 when we had to be at the airport to drop off the car. Calgary airport is super easy as I've said before, no hassle with shuttles just a short flat walk across to the airport. Journey takes just over an hour so plenty of time to enjoy our last day.

We loaded up the car but left it in the underground carpark and went for a walk into Canmore along the boardwalk. The weather was lovely, sunny and actually quite hot! The high street is very cute with little shops and museums, probably more liveable than Banff. We bought paninis for lunch and looked in a few shops, although we didn't buy anything as our bags were pretty full! We walked back in the 26c heat along the boardwalk.

We got the car out and headed down Hywy 1 until the 40 turnoff. It warned us that the 40 was still closed due to avalanche risk but turned out that we turned off at the point it was closed. However lots of people were parked there and had bikes and boots out to hike/cycle further along. We headed down to the Peter Lougheed Centre after stopping at Lorette Ponds for our lunch. After reading what wildlife had been seen around the PL centre we carried on to Bolton Creek camp site where a grizzly had been seen but the rangers had obviously chased it off. BTW we would never get out of our car to try and find any animals nor follow it. We had come to this part last year but used the road through the mountains from Canmore which was gravel and very dusty. When we come back I think we will investigate this area a bit more.

We turned around and headed back towards Calgary as we still had to refuel near the airport. It was a pretty easy journey and we had loads of time to spare luckily as dh was fully investigated as something about him and his carry on had grabbed security attention! Normally it is me!

We grabbed a snack at A&W and also a couple of bits from Duty free - maple cookies for Neils work and 1/2 bottle Banff Park Gin. On to the plane roughly on time. Family in front of us seemed to have had the dad upgraded but no one else, Dad gave in and stayed with family, what would you have done? Strangely though PE wasn’t full - we had a row of 3 to ourselves plus the row behind us! Downside is that PE arms don’t lift so we couldn’t really make use of it, but with no one behind us didn’t feel bad fully reclining. Dh tried to go straight to sleep whereas I couldn’t resist the braised short rib and chocolate cake. I did go to sleep fairly soon after the end of a 10 year old film with Paul Rudd, Jason Seagal and 2 people (looking very young) from Brooklyn 99.

We landed pretty much on time, and collected our luggage and car with no issues apart from a huge queue at the lifts to the car park.
Straight drive home down the M3, picked up some food, washing on and managed to stay up till about 10, hope we will be ok at work tomorrow!

Great holiday, didn’t feel rushed and although we saw lots of stuff feel that we will still go back, just loved it over there at that time of year.

[WileyCoyote]

Glad you had a nice last day and travelling home went ok .

[anji]

Another great trip and you were so lucky with your wildlife spotting!