Day three in Banff, with sore legs

We stayed in town today and did some trail hiking. It is kind of hard to remember, while on the busy tourist-filled streets (and the tourists are filled with shopping bags), that we are in a National Park. But this morning we walked for 10 minutes, and found ourselves in an old-growth spruce forest, with the beautiful Rockies in the background. It's amazing how even a muddy old CPR train crossing can look incredibly picturesque with a snowy mountain range as a backdrop! We also walked across the Spray River and found a forest trail around the Banff Springs Hotel, which connected to a trail along the Bow River. About 10% of the Bow River Falls was in liquid form, but even that much was stunning. The blue of the water in the Rockies comes from all the "rock flour" or ground-up mountain pieces that come from the glacial runoff. The Bow river that we hung out at this afternoon starts in the park at the Bow Glacier, and flows into the South Saskatchewan River and keeps flowing east to the Hudson's Bay, so it almost touches Ontario. The Rockies are experiencing Chinook winds which  means the weather is very mild and snow is melting. Nowhere left to snowshoe, but perfect weather for walking around outside and imagining spring.

Okay, so this afternoon, we're sitting on the west bank of the Bow River, and on the opposite bank wanders across a lone mule deer. They look like chunky deer (just like Dad Barrett described), with big dog-like ears. This one didn't have antlers, and was placidly nibbling at the little plants along the steep river bank. We had taken Colin's new binoculars for a walk, and were lucky to get them out in time to watch the cute thing for a little while.

This evening we moved into a great B&B Blue Mountain Lodge, a cool old place on Caribou St that was built in 1902 and used as a rooming house since then. The WiFi is a bit slow, so we will be posting photos (including ones of the amazing view of Cascade Mountain) as soon as we get to a place with faster internet :)

We have some great plans for the next few days: Calgary tomorrow, staying with Carla and Kirk (and celebrating another birthday!), then over to Nelson, BC for a few days and staying with Samantha's family. Then to Mission, BC (we'll explain why later), and staying in Vancouver to see lots of pals. We are still working out our route from southern BC to Yukon, so some research will be underway soon.

Time for dessert! We're back out to downtown Banff for something sweet.
Colin and Lauren