Today we tried to sleep until people woke up. So of course Liam and I were the first to get up. Once everyone was up we grabbed breakfast in the lobby and packed up the room, which is no small feat for our crew!

We set off to Johnston Canyon, one of the most popular hikes in Banff. I read that it could get super busy, so I was expecting the worst since we didn't get a very early start. We were pleasantly surprised to find parking right away, so we headed out. The trail started up through a dense forest along the river. The trail continued through the canyon and at several points the trail became a boardwalk attached to the canyon so that you're just hanging out over the river. The canyon was deep and winding and really beautiful. After about an hour we made it to the lower falls where you get to go through a small tunnel to stand right next to the waterfall on a small platform. The big three and I loved it, but Whitaker was not pleased about all of the spray in his face!

After double checking that we had enough snacks we decided that we could make it to the upper falls and started climbing higher. After another hour or so we got to the higher falls. Here you walked out onto a platform right in front of a 100 foot waterfall. Of course I saw a sign that said you could go higher...so we did! We made it all the way to the top, looking over the top of the upper falls. Luckily Kevin had packed a little baggie of M&Ms and that seemed to keep the kids going as we started the trek down. Overall it was about a 4 mile hike with 900 foot elevation gain and we did it in a whopping 3 hours :) Not bad for our rag tag crew.

We jumped in the car and started down the Bow Valley Parkway, which is a beautiful way to get between Banff and Lake Louise. Kevin found a picnic table right under Castle Mountain where the kids apparently still had energy to play tag and climb rocks! We searched for wildlife along the roadway but only spotted one deer. We stopped at a few lookouts, the best of which was Morant's curve. It overlooked the Bow River which is paralleled by the railroad tracks and Odin counted over 20 different mountains you could see from the lookout. It was breathtaking.

We checked into the Lake Louise Inn where the kids were excited to have bunkbeds and we were happy to have a living room! Liam is excited to be learning how to play Euchre so after grabbing some groceries we played a few hands. Luckily we ended our 4 hands with a tie, so everyone could go to bed earlier than we have yet on the trip because our bus is picking us up at 4:10am tomorrow morning!