Last Day in Banff

Today is our final day here, tomorrow we head up to Jasper National Park. The weather forecast here is for a nice morning, and a chilly, maybe rainy afternoon so we decided to hike Johnson Lake mid-morning.

As we headed toward the lake, there was a pull-off at an old ghost town-site called Bankhead. It was a coal mining area around the turn of the century.

We walked to the site where the church had been. When the town closed down, it was one of the buildings that was cut in half and hauled off to Calgary where it was in service till the mid-1960's.

 

All that was left at the site was the church basement and the steps up to what used to be the sanctuary.

Then, as if I was standing at the top of the steps, I turned around and looked at what the worshipers saw every time they walked OUT of the church after services.

I realized that they had a wonderful and inspiring view.

The rest of the town was down at the bottom of a hill. We could see it from the top where we were, but since we were anticipating a hike, we decided to spare our hips and knees, at least for the time being and just scan it from our vantage point.

Being the Saturday before Labor Day, we figured the trail would be packed. Rigs were rolling into our RV park till pretty late last night in preparation for the holiday weekend.

However, when we got to the lake there were very few cars in the parking lot. The temps were in the 60's and the lake was smooth as glass, so it was a great day for a hike. The emerald green lake was a mirror to the clouds and mountains surrounding the lake.

It was a great trail, fairly smooth, with some ups and downs that left us out of breath, but a beautiful walk through the forest and along the lake. When we got to the far end of the lake, there was a bench and so we stopped and had lunch.

One hiker who passed us there, called it, "A table with a view." And so it was.

After a relaxing lunch, it was back up and hiking the opposite of the lake...

...and across a stream. We had hiked just under two miles, and it had been great!

 

Since we still had a good bit of the day to kill, we decided to check out Bow Falls on the Bow River, close in to Banff.

Then we discovered a 'back' road that we hadn't even planned to take, but of course, we did. It was there that I got my best shot of the Banff Springs Hotel from across the river. We didn't even know you could see it from there, so that was a nice surprise.

After that we came upon a steep trail that led to the top of Tunnel Mountain. It didn't take much to decide to leave that for the younger generation, and directly across from that was another trail that led all the way down into the town of Banff...a looong way down into Banff. Our knees and hips immediately crossed both those excursions off the list...

So tomorrow we are up early and off to Jasper. It's a pretty long drive on the Icefields Highway and I'm expecting a lot of photo opportunities. Stay tuned.