Up early (well, just after 7am) to get ready to leave by 8:30am to get a park in Banff. We arrived at the Banff Recreation Centre to easily get a park. We then headed into town on foot to the Main Street (Banff Ave). We found where to catch the free gondola shuttle (which was a huge bus!). We were then bused up to Banff Gondola where we had to queue for tickets. Here when you buy your tickets, you are given a time to go up the gondola and a time to come down...

We sorted out our bags and took smaller ones with us on our trip to Banff, leaving our bigger bags at Kelsi and Cameron's. We left Jasper just after 9am. As always, there just seems to be one spectacular mountain after another! We finally get on the Icefields Parkway, where we stopped at Athabasca Glacier, where we walked up a steep (and I mean steep!) pathway, and thankfully short, to the edge of the glacier. It was so COLD that I ended up getting a headache...

After another good sleep, we headed south down past Moose Lake to Blue River Safaris to see if we could see any bears. We got there early and got on a boat quite quick. Our guide was Carter who hailed from Australia of all places!! There were about 10 of us on the boat. The others were either from Austria or Switzerland. We were the only New Zealanders! Carter then took us out onto the lake where we had to keep our eyes peeled for any sign of a bear. It was...

We had a wonderful sleep in a bed after our train trip. Then it was downstairs to have breakfast with Kelsi and Cameron. After getting ourselves ready to go out, we went to Maligne Lake with a stop before at another lake that was very low. Here we spotted the Pika! What a cute little mammal they are!! They make a noise that sounds a bit like "eek"! They are really small, but can move very quickly over and under rocks. While making our way to Maligne Lake, w...

Well, we spent 19 hours on the train, where we tried to sleep, plus stopped at Kamloops, where there seemed to be nothing! Apparently, even the station was a shack! We were there for half an hour, really just to stretch our legs, while the locomotives were re-fuelled. This was around 6:30am! Here we also learned that the train was 25 carriages long! Some of them seemed longer than the normal carriage as well, so it was a big train! The train trip acutely wen...