Canada - May you said, oh yeah!- May 30th Hoodoo thought it!

[parisdisneyfan]

The weather forecast wasn't great for today, which ended up being wrong! .

As we were only in the apartment for a couple of days I hadn't got organised for breakfast so we decided to go into Banff. We left the hotel around 8.30 and parked at Bow Falls which gave us a nice walk into town. It starts off quite strenuous (for us! ) as it is loads of steps up the side of the falls. The noise and view were lovely though.
We could have followed the road round but we went through the woods on a trail which takes you over a pedestrian bridge instead of the road bridge. We had several recommendations for breakfast but liked the look of Toloulous which is a Cajun/Louisiana food. I had the maple bacon pancakes - bits of bacon in the pancakes, so yummy. Dh had the breakfast sandwich, both were huge and very delicious with lovely service, despite them being very busy.

To walk off a bit of breakfast we had a wander around and a bit of a shopping spree. After our huge breakfast we weren't bothered about lunch so took a slow walk back to the car by the falls. The lady we had met in the middle of Moraine Lake had recommended driving around the Banff Fairmont golf course. This idea seemed similar to doing the drive around Pebble Beach in California, but free and not so long! Although it was very pretty and scenic we didn't see anything special.

We like the drive up around Tunnel mountain and the short walk to look down on the Hoodoo rock formations and the Bow River so stopped there. We walked further than we did last summer as it was a lot cooler. I was ok when we were out in the open but walking through the wooded bits I was a bit skittish as we were on our own and weren't seeing other people. We didn't see any bears whenever we were out of the car but lots of warnings and we had no bear spray!

Back in the car, we reckoned we had made room for ice cream and the weather was lovely considering it was supposed to be grey and drizzly today. Should we head back to Banff, I still hadn't had some Cows ice cream or head out to Lake Minnewanka as we remembered nice ice cream there. We went with the lake option and it was a good choice.
We were just a few hundred yards from the car park and going round a corner and we saw a cinnamon bear with 3 cubs cross the road, 2 cinnamon and 1 black. It happened very quickly so no good photos but a great memory.

Carried on to LM car park and there was the ice cream shack . This Lake was defrosted but we didn't fancy a boat trip. We thought we would carry on the loop round to Two Jack Lake to get back to Canmore.
We were also hoping to perhaps see the bear again as she was headed that way but no luck. We stopped at Safeway in Canmore and had a nice steak and wine on the balcony watching the view. The wine dh chose specially as he had watched Wayne Gretsky play ice hockey in the Nagano winter olympics in 1998!

Apart from the night at Lake Louise I don't think we stayed up til sunset as it was so late happening! Only 1 more full day left

[WileyCoyote]

How fab to see the baby bears .
Lovely morning after that scrummy breakfast too.
Another completely lovely day and that steak/wine combo with that view. Well, just perfection.