Onto Banff

I had a little wander around the downtown streets of Calgary last night. The streets were affluent, clean and modern although not unsurprisingly on a Monday they were pretty tranquil, and it would have been hard to find any trouble, so I settled at the hotel bar for a couple of pints with the other travelling salesmen.

I leave for Banff shortly and have taken a look at what to expect. The town is actually within the National Park and began as the park’s headquarters.

Banff National Park is Canada’s oldest and encompasses over 2,500 sq. miles of towering Rocky Mountains. The area is renowned not only for it’s peaks but also for it’s lakes, glaciers and icefields plus a whole range of wildlife, with deer and elk, I read, often seen roaming around the main town!

Reading through some of the travel guides on Banff, it does sound gorgeous up there, so I am keen on trying to get away from work stuff and do some sightseeing.

I am in Banff for a rail conference – once an Addick trainspotter, always an Addick trainspotter – but the reason we are all hiking it up there from all over the world is that railroads have always been synonymous with the Rockies, although I’ve read that trains no longer stop at Banff’s historic train station.

Lake Louise sounds a must and as I have ducked out of a round of golf tomorrow I’m wondering if I can rent a car and drive up there? It looks like it’s about an hour by car.

Jasper just sounds too far and interestingly I shared a cab with an American couple the other week when my son was here and they drove from Lake Louise to Jasper last summer and it took them 8 hours. It is about a 3-hour drive, but there were so many jaw-dropping sights that they kept pulling over!

I’m not doing the drive from Calgary to Banff so will be mostly looking out of the window. Later.