We have now arrived in Calgary for the last leg on the west coast and I am writing this whilst catching up with Wimbledon on the “small” TV in our new apartment.

This post is a quick update on our last few days in and around Banff. After our busy day in Lake Louise we decided to take it a bit easier on the Tuesday, starting with a dip in one of their famous hot springs. We decided to go to Banff Hot Springs as we hadn’t yet ventured into Banff.

This is a public spring water pool, like a giant hot tub, which has mountain views. The water is actually spring water that flows out of the nearby Sulphar Mountain. It’s even said to have healing qualities. It was probably a little bit hot for us (well it was around 40 degrees), not helped by the fact it was one of the hottest days we’d had. There were limited shady spots too so there was no escape from the sun. Nevertheless, it was fun to have a soak and take in the views.

We then had a stroll around the town. We soon found out that it was Canada Day (the National Day of Canada, so a public holiday) meaning everywhere was busy and there were various events and parades taking place around the town. A lot of people were dressed in Canadian colours too and carrying flags etc.

After a few hours wandering around the town and looking in the various gift shops, we headed to Grizzly Paw brewery, which was in nearby Canmore. They had a special event on in their beer garden for Canada day with live music, games and food trucks to keep us entertained whilst we sampled their beer.

Yoho National Park

Our third day saw us go to Yoho National Park doing various hikes. The name of the park made me want to keep singing the pirate song from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World, which for those of you unfamiliar with such a song, it goes along the lines of “Yo ho yo ho, a pirate’s life for me…”. Not sure Si was that impressed…

This is going to be our last day of hiking for a while so we wanted to make the most of it. We spent the morning at Emerald Lake, a lake named after the colour of the water I assume. You can do a loop of the lake too which is what we did.

Hamilton Falls

We then did a walk up to Hamilton Falls, which was a short walk up to what feels like the 100th waterfall we’d seen on this trip so far. I hope you are not too bored with waterfall pictures as there’s a couple more to see before the end of the blog.

In the afternoon we hiked to Wapta Falls before stopping at Takakkaw Falls on the route home out of the Park.

Wapta Falls

Takakkaw Falls

Takakkaw Falls is one of the highest waterfalls in the whole of Canada – Jerry seemed to enjoy it.

We are off to the Calgary Stampede tomorrow so will do another post with pics and updates from Calgary soon.

Lucy