The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise

17th July 2007 - Johnston Canyon - Lake Louise In the morning we hiked Johnston Canyon and up to a couple of waterfalls. It was a nice trail, it was obvious that they had spent a lot of money on it. After we headed to Lake Louise, which  is full of tourists! The Fairmont is a pretty cool hotel and the lake is beautiful but I personally think Peyto Lake is much more impressive. It didn't take long until we were hiking again! 3.5 Kilometers uphill with no level places. It took about 1.5 hours t...

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to update the travel pod, but I have had problems with accessing the internet over the past few days. And then when I did have access, I find out that Richmond has lost again!!! We spent 2 wonderful days at Victoria on Vancouver Island. We stayed at the Inn at Laurel Point which was right on the water and had a wonderful view of the ferries travelling backwards and forwards from the States and also we were able to watch seaplanes taking off and landing right...

To get to Lake Louise we took Trans Canadian Highway #1, mostly a 4 lane highway from Canmore, through Banff to Lake Louise, the most photographed lake in North America. The speed limit is 90 km/hr or 56 mph on major roads and only 60 km/hr or 37 mph on secondary roads...supposed to slow people down, but drivers are nearly as impatient as at home. Once you look at the photos, you'll see why Lake Louise is so photographed...it is such a beautiful site, but it is also the hiking capital of Cana...

On our second day in Jasper we were jumping into a van at 8:30am and heading down the Icefields Parkway with two other couples. Joe, our driver and guide, gave us some information about the Jasper and Banff National Parks, which are side by side and form the Icefield Parkway. Jasper is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies, spanning 10,878 km². The park includes the glaciers of the Columbia Icefield, hot springs, lakes, waterfalls and, of course, mountains. Wildlife in the park in...

Lake Louise is only a couple of hours drive north from Banff and as we cruise along the Trans Canada Highway we are edged by high peaks with thick fir forests rolling down to the roadside. There are waterfalls tumbling out of the slopes and filling lakes next to the road. Impressive - that's cos I'm trying to find alternatives to "Awesome" ! This 7 day tour has been organised by Brewster, Canada who have booked all the hotels so its a case of seeing what we get. One of my reasons for choosing...

Lake Louise is frozen!!!! Wow - I've seen it when it is the gorgeous turquoise colour and now I've seen the lake when it's frozen and there is lots of snow and ice around.....Fantastic!!!!!! Only staying the one night in Lake Louise but have arrived a little earlier than the recent days and I have to do a little gloating - I had dinner in the Fairview and sipped a cocktail called "Very Sexy" which contained Moet & Chandon (probably just a tiny thimble-size) and the view from my room was f...

Banff - nice town but god, what a tourist trap. It has a beautiful setting, right in the Rockies, and its a nice enough town centre with the usual wooden buildings as befit the area, but the shops all sell tourist **** at overinflated prices, accommodation is expensive, and I just didn't get its appeal really. The outskirts were much much nicer to be in, hence my reason for taking a horseback ride through the Rockies. Got to be done really, even though I'm still quite scared of horses (I wasn...

After a week of driving and sightseeing our way across the Northern US, and one night in Calgary, we finally reached Banff National Park, paid our entry fee (we decided to get an annual Canadian Parks pass as the weekly pass is about $74 and the annual about $95), and drove through all the spectacular scenery, through Banff itself, and on to Lake Louise. Even though by now it was after Labor Day, we had booked reservations in advance, a good thing. We had decided Banff itself was going to be ...

Paul's parents Brian and Gill came to visit and we were fortunate to go on the very famous 'once in a lifetime' Rocky Mountaineer Train from Vancouver to Banff National Park. The train was fabulous, every morning we had to get up at the crack of dawn, but we got to enjoy sunrises in all sorts of exotic locations which made it all worthwhile. We were extremely well fed, and while Paul and I brought the average age of the tour down by about 30 years, we had a pretty raucous crowd on board. We s...

We left the UK on 12th June and flew to Calgary. We only had an overnight stop there before picking up the hire car the next morning and heading to the Rockies. 'Picking up the hire car makes it sound as though we were relaxed about this, but we weren't. My confidence was further eroded when, on collecting the car keys, Rob strode purposefully to the passenger side of the car and wondered where the steering wheel was. (Then it was my turn to navigate us out of the airport. We only had to get ...