Touristy Banff

Sorry, no photos today. I don't have time to upload them. And this cafe isn't cheap, either. In fact, nothing in Banff is. Laundry is three dollars per load, and drying is a quarter. For four minutes. Tourist trap central. It was funny yesterday when dude at the infocentre looked at me with a combination of pity and laughter when I asked if there was a Tim Horton's in town. But of course, there was a Starbucks right across the street. That tells you the type of person this town was built for.

I have to hand it to Banff, though. It is quite scenic. And cold. It went down below freezing last night. We survived in our tent well enough. Apparently it snowed here a few days ago (a few inches), so luckily we missed that. We did a mountain trail today. It was 5.5km long, and included 700m of up. The majority of the people who visited the top of the mountain used the gondola. It got a lot colder above the snow line, but we had enough clothing to get by. We ate at the top and took the gondola back down. I feel much better after my shower. :)

We drove the Icefields Parkway on Monday. It is "holy cow" scenic. I kept stopping at roadside scenic overlooks to look and take pics. We even got to see the Athabasca glacier - which no one is supposed to go near, because it is so unstable. But nobody listened (including us :( ). We only went to the edge, whereas others were climbing hundreds of metres up the glacier, all the while forgetting the stories they should have read at the end of the trail on the little boy who died there in 2001. Oh well. The human race. Aren't we special?

Hopefully I will be able to find another computer somewhere before we hit the Okanagan this weekend, where it should be a lot warmer.

And the reason I am not doing pics? I have been at this computer an hour already, and downloading photos would probably take another hour. And I'm hungry. I guess I forgot to mention that. :)