September 27

We started our day by heading to the Banff gondola lift. As we were wandering through the gift shop, James made ANOTHER friend! I think he just likes to get his picture taken. We then took the gondola lift to the very top of the tallest mountain in the area (I have provided a picture of me in the gondola to prove to my daughters that I really did ride it.) You can see the great view from the top (I pointed out the Fairmont Lodge which had no vacancies last night.) We saw a small herd of mountain goats on the top of the mountain and one posed for that perfect picture. When we left Banff we headed to Lake Louise. We parked the car and walked to the lake. As we turned the bend in the path, the view took my breath. It is as beautiful as we had heard. Pictures just do not do it justice. There is also a Fairmont hotel at Lake Louise and I just had to get my picture made with their flowers. You can see how huge this hotel is by looking at the picture of James with the hotel in the background. We left there and headed to the ice field and on the road spotted our first moose! We have seen a litany of wildlife. We topped the day off by taking a trip to the Columbia Ice field in a Glacier Explorer (a special built vehicle that navigates up extremely steep embankments and navigates well on solid ice.) As you can tell from my picture it was FREEZING on the glacier. But what a great thrill. We actually WALKED on the glacier. After we left there we drove to Jasper for the night. On the way we saw more deer and another moose but it was too dark to make pictures. Another GREAT day!