Day 18 – Banff National Park – part deux

Today we left the RV parked and used the city and park shuttle systems.  While it’s a lot more convenient for us, the opportunities to photograph the area are more limited because we can’t just stop anywhere.  We saw a lot more than we photographed today, but I think there’s enough to get the flavor of where we are.

The shuttle downtown is quick, then a short walk to the train station to board the park service bus.  Most of the bus and tour vehicles originate at this point.

We arrived at Johnston Canyon after a scenic 45 minute ride.

This is another stroll along a river gorge, up a hill to the Johnston Canyon lower and upper falls. 

 Much of the trail is a catwalk pinned into the side of the gorge.  The rest is a trail that has a rough paved surface.

There are a few minor falls as we make our way to the lower falls.

We arrive at the lower falls.  The water in the pool below is the prettiest aqua color.

There’s a cave like opening in the rock just to the left of the tree trunk where the people are lined up to enter and get a close up view.

It wasn’t worth my time to get any closer.  We began the trek to the upper falls and got an elevated view of the lower falls.  Bet that’s confusing to you.

A little further up the trail we view another set of falls.

You may be able to see in the lower left, the clarity of the water over the rocks.  Like everywhere we’ve been the past two weeks, this is like tap water.  It’s absolutely clear.

A bit higher on the trail and another falls appears.

We continue past that falls…

…and finally arrive at the upper falls after a 520 foot climb over about a mile and a half.

That’s a bit of uphill trekking.  The end of the trail is on a platform over the river but really doesn’t extend quite far enough for a real good view of these falls.  This is as good as it gets.

Just downstream, the rock wall looks a bit like wood, I thought.

We hiked down the 520 feet and missed the next shuttle by 5 minutes and had to wait about an hour for the next ride.  We stepped into the café at the site and had something to drink then caught the shuttle back to Banff.  Then we took the city shuttle to the RV and had lunch. 

After lunch, it was back to the shuttle for a ride out to view Lake Minnewanka.

My original plan was to rent a boat here and motor up the lake but it was much too cold and windy for a ride in a 16’ rowboat.  I zoomed in and got a shot of one of the tour boats on the lake.

The mountains here are high and rugged looking.  They have much more elevation above the tree line than the mountains in Glacier. 

These are the scenes I captured around the Lake Minnewanka lookout.

Trying to capture the enormity of these mountains is impossible.  There is no snow on these mountains.  The peaks are all a light gray color stone.  Very different from Glacier peaks.

The peaks viewed from our campsite tower as well.

This campground is built such that you basically park along the side of the “roads” in the campground.  There’s a power pylon and picnic table every 100’ or so.  It does make in easy in/out.

So that was our first full day here.  It’s a little too chilly with a wind chill.  The high today was not quite 60° and mostly cloudy.  The good news is the smoke haze seemed minimal.

Tomorrow we’re going to shuttle up to Lake Louise.