We pulled into Banff at 9am and drove in a taxi to the Tunnel Mountain HI hostel where we dropped off our gear. The hostel looked nice, the staff were friendly and we locked our gear in the supply room. The hostel gave us free bus tickets and we headed out to the bus stop. In town we had a look around and did some grocey shopping. We then bused back to the hostel to relax before the check in time at 3pm.
After check-in Candice went to sleep. I headed back into town for further supplies and a good look around. Banff was a small picturesque town surrounded by beautiful mountains, I felt this is what we came to Canada for!
That night we had our 1st home cooked meal, it was better than any of the food we had previously had. We decided that if we wanted to eat well, home cooked meals were the way to go.
The next day I went into town to pick the car up. The car was a small modest Chevrolet, it was a very basic model and didn't even have central locking.
Driving on the opposite side of the road was new but but not difficult, it was easy to follow the other cars in front of me.
Around 12 noon we drove across town to the foot of Sulphur Mountain and hiked to the top. There was a gondola that ran up but we wanted to get some walking in. We climbed only 600 meters to the top, though the mountain sits 2,451 meters high. Spectacular views followed as we ate our lunch at the top.
A great thing about Suphur Mountain are the hot springs at the bottom, we would have been foolish not to soak up when we returned from the descent. After the hot springs we drove towards Lake Louise, we took the scenic Bow Valley Parkway route. We only stopped once to photograph the famous Castle Mountain and just over an hour later we were in Lake Louise.
We checked into the HI hostel, then enjoyed a meal in the onsite resturant.
