4 Days Banff + Jasper Trip Summary Jasper, Summary, Trip, Days, Banff

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I want to do a quick summary for the trip before I forget. I will do a day to day first.

Day 1
- Took Canada Line from hotel to airport ($2 only!!!) for early flight to Calgary.
- Arrived in YYC and picked up rental car from airport. a bit shock to find Lost and Damage waver insurance cost @ $35/day but we got a good deal on the rental itself and my friend only has an international DL. We got a Toyota Matrix with only 8000km on it!

- Drove to Banff and missed an exit.... @@ drove up and then down the Bow Valley Parkway for an hour. (stupid GPS!)

By the time we arrived at Banff it's late (~1:30pm) and were HUNGARY. We were surprised to find The Eddie Burger and Bar! Really good burgers and great fries. (esp yam fries)



We went to the info centre and got some instructions and maps. Then we headed off to the Surphur Mountain Gondola. We were shock to find the price of the ride $29 (instead of $19 in my guide book). But well we still went up. Spent some time wondering around and taking pictures.


We left for the Banff Spring Hotel and just walked around. I saw a red Ferrari and took a picture of it.


We check into our hotel/lodge. It's a bit older than we thought and there were some very lound young kids around ... I guess cos it's near some ski slopes...Luckily they don't stay near our unit. The wood fireplace in the sitting room was fun and smoky haha. We were too full to have proper dinner so we ate at the food court on our first night.  

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Took Canada Line from hotel to airport ($2 only!!!)
should it be either $2.5 or $1.75?

will your da ...
tofu 發表於 2010-5-26 08:27 PM

$2 cos I use my old faresaver tickets ^_^ $1.90 to be exact
BC DL will be the same insurance cost but if I am the only driver, I can use my Visa card's coverage and not buy the extra insurance.
this time both me and my friend drove. (bcdl + international dl)
hotel is about $150 per day.

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Day 2

We got up and had breakfast at our room as planned. Haha found out that there was no cooking oil in the kitchen... so we use the non-stick pan and fried the sausages and then did scramble eggs, made toast and coffee.

After breakfast, we drove to Lake Louise. It was pretty early (around 10am) so the parking lot was pretty empty. We walked along the frozen lake (as expected) and took lots of pictures. We chatted and catched up during the walk as well.


After the long stroll, we went to the Chateau Lake Louise and found out that their pretty lunch restaurant was fully booked.

We were hungry by then and decided not to wait and drove down to find something to eat.

Very close to Chateau Lake Louise is the Deer Lodge. The restaurant looked closed and quiet. So I dropped off my friends and they went in and found the place acutally open (and had another table of customers inside). So we had our lunch there and it was surprisingly good!
It's called the Caribou Lounge.





After lunch we drove to Moraine Lake. It's MORE frozen than Lake Louise. But some ppl wore flip flops and shorts there while we were in our thick fleece... @@


We braved ourselves and tried to walk up a snowy trail but... didn't make very far.

We then headed to Johnston Canyon which is on our way back to Banff. It's a very easy and nicely paved path to the waterfall.


We drove back to Banff, got changed and then went to the Upper Hotsprings and soak up! It's a pretty good outdoor pool. Not super hot. (it said 39C but we didn't feel that)

We had dinner at Saltlik... which was expensive and only alright.... I was too hungry to take picture by then... and they were just plain steaks.

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Day 3
Plan for day 3 is simple, planned to pick up sandwiches for lunch before we drive up the Bow Valley Parkway to Jasper.
We drove pass a few more frozen lakes





We got sandwiches from WildFlour bakery. It's pretty good but I wished we had ordered it "not grilled". Sandwiches got chewy after being grilled then cool. We got tickets for the Columbia Icefield Explorer ride and then had lunch at the icefield centre. It was raining when we got off the big wheels explorer... But it turned sunny in a few mins! MukMuk took a picture there!



After the icefield, we continue our drive to Jasper. On the way, we stopped by another set of waterfalls. This is very close to parking and again a nice and short walk to the view points.



We arrived at Patricia Lake Bungalow and were surprised by how nice and new our room is. Unlike most of the older bungalows, our room is in one of the new houses built in 2009! It has fancy shower and gas fireplace. We settled down and then took a short walk to the lake. It was SO quiet and peaceful. I think this lake will be packed with ppl doing watersports in the summer. Patricia Lake is about 10 min drive from Jasper town.
   

As suggested by the hostess, we had dinner at Papa George's Restaurant in Jasper town. Steak dinner was only $15 including a glass of wine. The steak was not bad considering the price (vs what we had at Saltlik the night before)


We also swing by Pyramid Lake just few min from Patricia Lake and saw the prettiest reflection on the calm lake at sunset.

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回復 10# 布小熊
Day 4
This is the last day and we had nothing planned for the day.
We got up early because we wanted to see some animals (esp Moose and bears). We drove to the Jasper Lodge (Fairmount) and saw a herd of elks on the way. Then we drove around that area a bit and only saw some deers. We were disappointed cos there were so many Moose crossing warning sign but no real Moose.


So we went back to Jasper and had a big breakfast at 9:30 am. We bought some cookies as snack at Bear's Paw Bakery and planned to skip lunch.
We start driving back to Calgary mostly through the Bow Valley Parkway. And we saw SO MANY animals!!
- 2 black bears! One pretty close (across the hwy on a little hill)
- 1 mountain goat
- more deers
- more elks

And we took pictures of the scenary that we missed on the way up Jasper.
We got to Calgary at around 6pm and had dinner at Vintage.
So funny that we told the servers that we were catching a flight and they told us the drive to airport could be up to 20min. We rush thro dinner with very good Canadian Prime steaks and then got to the airport early.

Overall, it's a great trip.

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回復 12# Catpiano
Really! Let me post more bear pictures. We basically were all looking out from the car for animals and we stopped whenever we saw a tour bus stopped on the side of the road for no obvious reason.

pictures of the far far away bear:


picture of the bear next to the hwy. he was walking up the hill.

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回復 14# Catpiano

haha this one was very relax. He was digging and eating something on the ground.
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