We woke up to a cold, crisp morning with a blue sky dotted with clouds to the west and a thick, cover of grey sky moving in from the east. Our destination was only a hundred kilometres away...Banff and Lake Louise within the confines of the Banff National Park a huge tourism draw (and rightfully so). We were slow leaving Pine Creek and we fuelled up the motorhome in Calgary so we didn't arrive in Banff until almost two in the afternoon.

After driving through the town and making a very interesting, precarious turnaround at the famed Banff Springs Hotel, we headed for the Tunnel Mountain Campground just outside of town, a provincial park with pull-through campsites. Once we were settled, we then used the car to manoeuvre around the town with a lot more ease and stopped for lunch and a quick "look-see" before driving roughly an hour to Lake Louise. I have seen it a few times before but always in the winter so I was surprised to see how green it was when it wasn't covered in layers of ice and snow. Rick was the only one among us who has been here before and seen it in its "unfrozen" state and it was Chris and Fred's first time seeing it at all. We were among hundreds of tourists enjoying the beauty of its glacier fed waters as well as the surrounding snow capped mountains, fully understanding why it draws 3 million visitors a year. (This is a park worthy of an extended stay to fully explore all there is to see but it will have to wait for another time.)

We then drove back to Banff ready to explore the town centre and the stores where we found mostly Canadian-made goods (which was really nice to see). After two hours of browsing and a couple of souvenir purchases, we headed back to the campground for a feast of barbecued halibut and fresh salad and potatoes from Christine and Fred's garden in Coldwater. We got lucky with the weather (and the turnaround at the Banff Springs Hotel earlier) and we all retired to our beds for a goodnight's sleep.