The Lane's next BIG trip: Day 8. Banff. Friday 27th December

Andrew got up early to get some nice photos of the sunrise over the mountains and not long after that we headed off for the 60 km drive to Lake Louise. A local had told us that by driving on the Bow River Parkway as opposed to the National Highway we would see some wildlife. The kids were keen to spot a Moose, Elk or Mountain Goat. Andrew was looking for a Cougar (and found one sitting next to him) and Christine a Hugh Jackman (Wolverine). After 90 minutes of driving along another beautiful scenic road we managed to see a total of one Chipmunk! Oh well, the scenery alone was worth the drive. We arrived at Lake Louise to an overcast morning that wasn't too cold (only -3). The gorgeous Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise sits proudly on the banks of the lake and is very popular all year round with canoeing in the summer and ice skating in the winter. It took us a couple of minutes to actually locate the lake but once we did we understood why it was such a popular destination. Christine and Cameron looked around the hotel and dreamed of coming back to stay and Andrew, Chelsea and Jacob went ice skating. In the middle of the rink is a castle sculpted out of ice. The kids and Andrew managed to walk out on the ice to the castle before they went skating but Christine wasn't feeling brave enough, having slipped on the ice a few days ago. After a couple of hours, hot chocolate, latte (which wasn't very nice) and some tea we went on an hour long horse drawn sleigh ride along the bank of the lake to a frozen waterfall. On the return leg the snow began to fall. It was very light to start with and was quite magical and as we pulled into the hotel on the sled it started to get heavier and the temperature seemed to drop. We ate a basic lunch of potato chips and fruit in the car park while we were waiting for the car to heat up. By this stage the snow had started to fall a lot more heavily and didn't stop until we arrived back in Banff late in the afternoon. We drove back to Banff along the highway and soon found out that 'Max 90km/h' actually means 120 km/h+ to the local Canadians. Again the day finished with another soak in the hot pool, this time in the snow.