Banff National park
Day 2
We woke up early had a little breakfast in our room with the food we had bought from the supermarket the night before and headed up the mountain in our little brum brum to lake Louise. This lake is what makes Banff national park the phenomenon it is, an awe-inspiring natural feature that is impossible to describe without actually seeing it yourself. It is named after queen Victoria's fourth daughter, it is a turquoise tinted lake and is surrounded by an amphitheater of finely chiseled mountains. Despite the hotel right in front of it and masses of tourists our first look at the lake still took our breath away. You just stand there in silence for a while taking it all in and taking a thousand photos. We looked at a map and decided to go on a 1.5km hike to the look out point, although this wasn't very long it was quite steep but a good walk non the less. The look out gave us spectacular views of the lake and mountains from a different vantage point. It had started to rain half way up unfortunately so the view was a bit hazy.
After the 1.5km hike back down we went to the other side of the lake and hiked 2.9km to mirror lake. This was a better hike than the other one but it was longer and pretty tiring. When we got to mirror lake it was nice but kind of a let down compared to lake Louise and at this point in the day there was no mirror image on the lake. We had our packed lunch there. By the time we had hiked back down we were shattered!! Kirsty calculated we had done around 20,000 steps.
In the afternoon we drove the car to Banff town to have a look around do a bit of shopping and eat some food. It's a hot spot for all tourists. Actually living in Banff town is a challenge as the federal government owns all the land, only those employed can take up residence and businesses are obligated to provide accommodations for their employees!
On the return home we stopped off a few times in the car to take some pictures of views. If you got carried away it could take you twice as long to complete a journey over here as you want to stop every mile to look at a different landscape or mountain or river!!