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We landed in Newark around 7pm Monday night and finally got home around 9pm. It was quite a long day considering we started waiting for the shuttle to Calgary at 7am in Banff (factoring in the 2 hour difference it was 9am EST though). We only had yesterday to relax because today we’re going to be surprising Jonathan.

He felt a bit bummed that he couldn’t go with us to Banff, but of course that was just for Mom and Dad. So we did the next best thing. We’re going to leave tonight for Orlando, Florida so all 3 of us can have a honeymoon The kewl part about it is that Jonathan has no idea. At 3pm we’re going to pick him up from school and drive straight to the Newark airport and we aren’t going to tell him where we’re going unless he figures it out. If it takes getting to where we board the plane, so be it! It’ll be great fun.

Anyways, between yesterday and today I was able to setup a gallery with more pictures of Banff. It starts slow with pictures of our hotel and such, but it’s worth watching past that. Banff was simply beautiful and it made taking pictures really easy for me. The scenes just kinda jumped into the camera.

You can access the gallery from here and then click on the section called Banff, Canada.

If you want to read more about the entire trip, check out these posts.

Banff, Canada Day 1 – Travelled
Banff, Canada Day 2
Banff, Canada Day 3
Banff, Canada Day 4
Banff, Canada Day 5 – Rested
Banff, Canada Day 6
Banff, Canada Day 7

Enjoy!

Well, today is our last day here in Banff unfortunately. We have to take a shuttle out of here at 7:30am tomorrow in order to catch our flight. Our flight isn’t until around noon, but the shuttle to Calgary takes about 2 hours.

On the bright side, we had a great day today. The Glacier Trail Tour we took today was probably the best tour we took all week. We went back to Lake Louise for a bit, stopped by a few other lakes and had the chance to hang out on an actual glacier. We also finally saw some animals!

I took another stab at taking a better picture of Lake Louise.

From what we can tell, according to the locals, seeing moose is extremely rare, at least at this time of year, so it was a real treat to catch a pair of moose hanging out just off the side of the road. Unfortunately I could only snap a picture of one of them. The other was  hiding in some trees further back.

Peyto Lake was absolutely beautiful.

We stopped at a smaller lake in what I believe was near the Saskatchewan Crossing and I snapped off some pictures. The reflections in the water were awesome and the woman paddling around in the water made me jealous.

Going to the Columbia Icefields was really unique and I’m glad we went.

The icefields are an amazing work of nature. It’s over 300 meters thick, feeds several glaciers and is twice the size of the city of Vancouver. We didn’t go on the actual icefield, but we did go up onto one of the glaciers it serves called the Athabasca Glacier. I think they said this particular glacier was about 700o feet above sea level. The icefields were up another 3000 feet.

Getting up to the glacier was fairly impressive. We first took a regular passenger bus up to a second bus station and then got into this offroad, winter-weather-shredding monster bus that took us the rest of the way up.

The first thing I did when I got off the bus was stick my foot in the loose ice on the glacier’s surface.

Here are some pictures of the actual glacier.

Our tour guide pulled us aside and brought us to an area of the glacier where there was a bit of water seeping through. We dunked a paper cup she had brought with her and we drank some of the glacier’s water. It had to be the purest water I’d ever tasted. It was amazing.

On our way back we spotted a couple of Mountain Goats which was our second lucky animal spotting!

We stopped at Bow Lake which was another great site. The shores of this lake were littered with small pebbles and the water splashed on to it almost like a beach’s waves would. It was so peaceful.

It appears no one wants the Ravens hanging around so they discourage feeding them, but…

…they still hang around anyways lol

I’m unsure if this picture reflects the size of the Raven. This is the first time I’d seen one in person and I was surprised at how big they are. They are probably double the size of your typical crow.

Last, but not least, it was interesting to see how they protect their wildlife. They literally build overpasses and underpasses near highways just for wildlife to cross. On either side of highways you can see 4-5 foot fences with another 1.5 feet burried down into the ground to cut down on animals crossing the highway. They say since they did it, animals killed by cars are down 80%. I suppose it’s good for people too lol

Here’s one of the overpasses. It’s wide enough to fit cars, but it’s for wildlife!

We took a bit of a break from excursions on Day 5 and hung out in the center of town a bit more buying miscellaneous gifts for our family.

Today, we went on the Minnewanka Lake Cruise which we were originally made to think wasn’t so great, but we’re so happy we went. Minnewanka, which translates into ‘Water of the Spirits’ is largest lake in the Banff National Park and it’s just amazing. The water isn’t as much of an emerald color as Lake Louise was, but it was surrounded in every possible direction by some serious mountainous beauty.

I took over 1,000 pictures today, but I widdled that count down to the follow pictures that I like best. I hope they can convey even some of what we saw today.

This is one of the mountains down the street from the hotel.

This is how it looks going over the bridge that leads into the center of town.

We took a bus over to Minnewanka Lake around 11:30am.

Minnewanka Lake

At one end of Minnewanka Lake is what they call the ‘Devils Gap’.

So after the tour, we asked the tour bus to drop us off in the center of town. There was a fondue restaurant called the Grizzly House that we wanted to check out. They had a fairly adventureous menu selection including Wild Boar, Venison, Bear, Ostrich, Shark, Alligator, Frogs Legs and Buffalo, but we stuck with the surf and turf.

Why? We’re chicken? lol nah. I just wasn’t about to cook exotic food that I’ve never had before. Do I like Alligator rare? How the hell do I know?

As a side note, what’s the deal with fondue anyway? You go to a restaurant and pay a substantial amount of money for someone to give you food so you can cook it yourself? Seriously? Can’t I do that at home? lol

Anyways, overall the place was pretty good, but… I have to tell a story about some seriously bad customer service.

We ordered our food and we’re hanging out talking while another waitress (not ours) walks by with some food for someone else. As she does, I heard a clank right near our table followed by the waitress saying ‘oh damn’, but the waitress kept on walking towards her table to deliver the food so I thought maybe she bumped into something.

Meanwhile I look down and it appears that a 2 inch high small metal dish of garlic butter was laying upside down on the floor and a good portion of it was all over my sneaker and pants. I look back to the waitress at the table and she’s holding her tray of food, talking to her customers with what seemed zer0 concern for me. I watch her as she proceeds to put the food down on the table and chat away with her customers.

Finally, after 5 minutes she comes by our table, makes a poor attempt to make light of the situation through humor and eventually offers to have my clothes cleaned in what I thought was a sarcastic manner. After all, I was wearing jeans and sneakers, not a suit. In the end she walked away being aggitated which I don’t get. She didn’t have butter dumped on her while she was ignored.

Then I see her off to the side talking to OUR waitress explaining that she ‘had hot plates in her hand’ and I just had it. I got up and walked over to them both and said ‘I just want to make it clear. I’m not upset about getting butter on me. Shit happens. I am upset that you didn’t think to show concern for me and your mess before moving on to your customers.’ As I sit down the waitress comes over to my table and repeats ‘I’m sorry for my ignorance’ several times, but in a sarcastic annoyed way that got my hair up even more… but I dropped it of course.

You’ve got to be kidding me lol

Anyways, the food was good and OUR waitress was good. They offered us free desert which was appreciated.

Today has been a great day so far and tomorrow will probably be another. We’re going to go on the Glacier Trail Tour which is a full 9.5 hour day of various sites

• Lake Louise: A brief photo stop at the most famous lake in Canada
• Crowfoot Glacier: One of the day’s many up close glacier views.
• Peyto Lake: The classic emerald green jewel of the Canadian Rockies.
• Mistaya Canyon: A dramatic example of water’s sculpting power.
• Saskatchewan Crossing: A rest stop/coffee break and home to Canada’s largest postcard display.
• Mountain Picnic Lunch: Enjoy a hearty lunch with your choice of sandwich at a scenic stop along the Icefields Parkway. 
• Cirrus Mountain: Look at the steep climb from the weeping wall and scope the avalanche slopes for wildlife.
• Bridal Veil Falls: Fantastic view over the Icefields Parkway and the falls.
• Columbia Icefields: Venture onto the Athabasca Glacier on the Ice Explorer! and visit the interpretive centre.
• Bow Lake: The headwaters of the mighty Bow River.

I have to go buy more batteries for my camera! lol.

So today we went on the Banff Gondola and it was pretty awesome.

For all you non-Gondola riding people out there, it’s basically a cable car combined with a ski lift. This one in particular brings you up 2,292 ft to an area surrounded by the Candian Rockies. They have a resturant up there with some gift shops, but more importantly they have areas that allow you to look out over the valley and the mountains.

Well, here’s some pictures from the adventure.

On the way up the mountain I snapped a quick picture of the valley. If you look to the left side, what looks like a bunch of buildings is actually our hotel.

One thing that surprised me was the large population of Asians in Alberta. That goes for tourists AND residents. I can’t say why I was surprised, or whether or not I should have been, but for one reason or another I was. I guess I didn’t realize Banff was such a tourist town. I thought I’d see only French Canadians.

Many Asians (probably around 5-10%) seem keen on wearing these germ masks for what seems to be a fear of the H1N1 Swine Flu. I say Asians were wearing them since I didn’t see a single non-Asian person wearing them and I’ve seen a lot of Asians wearing masks.

It’s freaky to be honest and I think it makes people paranoid. It makes me itchy. To add to that I found that the Toronto and Calgary airports were hopped up on Purell hand sanitizer stations. They were everywhere.

Here’s some more of the Canadian Rockies.

The restaurant had quite the view.

Hey you! Don’t feed the Mountain Goats!!

Today we went on a tour of Lake Louise and Lake Moraine. I can’t imagine I captured how unbelievable it was because even with a wide angle lens, I couldn’t get everything in to a shot. Hopefully these give you an idea of how beautiful it was.

Lake Louise is formed from a glacier you can see there in the top middle. The lake is formed between a set of mountains that surround it and there’s a small stream that runs away from the lake. As you can see, you can take a canoe out in the lake which must be great. Our only reason for not taking one was that we were on a tour so we had to make our way back to the bus in time.

Lake Moraine is fairly similar, but this one however, was even harder to take pictures of because the lake was at the bottom of several extremely high peaks. I couldn’t get far enough back to get it all in. Near the lake they had a path you could take that brought you to the top of a ‘pile of rocks’ (yes I know this is a bad description. I thought it was funny when the tour guide repeatedly talked about the ‘pile of rocks’, but that was until I saw it and realized…it was a pile of rocks lol)

Last but not least, I thought I’d toss this picture in here because it was interesting. All over town they these green boxes (look like mailboxes) without any descriptioin or instruction advising people what they are.

It turns out they’re bear-proof garbage cans. You put your hand in the slot and push a level attached to a spring-like mechanism and it opens the lid. Apparently the bear around Banff haven’t figured this out just yet! lol

Well, we had to take a later flight in which meant we needed to take connecting flights. It was Newark to Toronto (1.5 hours) and then Toronto to Calgary (4 hours) and then a shuttle to Banff (2 hours) so when we finally checked in at around 8pm mountain time. Needless to say coming from Eastern Time we were really tired.

We’re staying at the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel and I have to say the hotel is amazing. Faster internet service and bigger rooms would be nice, but otherwise I can’t say enough about it. Picture a castle-like hotel surrounded by the Canadian Rockies. For instance, here’s a picture of the lobby.

And here’s a picture outside the window of our room. The houses you see here aren’t residential, but simply the housing quarters for the people who work at the hotel.

We walked around the hotel today and in the back snapped a couple of pictures, but in no way does it do the place justice. It’s one of those things you can’t capture in a picture.

Later in the afternoon, we went on a rafting tour that meandered through the mountains behind the hotel and here’s a picture of the hotel from there.

Here’s another picture I snapped while rafting.

Then finally, after rafting we went into the center of town and I took this one from the middle of one of the roads.

Overall, the hotel and the surroundings are really amazing. The service is great, the people are nice and the scenery is nothing like I’ve ever seen before.

If I have time I’ll post more pictures over the next week. We’re going to be here until Monday.

Tomorrow we’re going on a tour over at Lake Louise which should be great and Thursday we’re going on the Gondola which should yeild some amazing pictures. We may also do the Columbia Icefield Glacier Tour too, but we’ll see how it goes.

For now, we’re heading over to the hottub so, catch ya later

I’m not sure how you make a post on your website about getting married. I mean, it’s such a huge event. What could I do to make this post explain the gravity of it all?

I’ll give it a quick shot anyway.

First, I have to say, I didn’t work on most of the wedding related tasks, but I think that’s typical of the groom since, honestly, men don’t really get wedding hard-ons like the women do. I had to do a head check early on since I thought there might have been something wrong with me not really being super interested in planning the wedding, but after talking to a few married men, they confirmed it was typical. Lucky I had Sandy. I have to tip my hat to her and her family who did a lot of work and design to make things really great.

My part was planning the honeymoon, writing the cermony with Sandy, writing the reading, tux rentals, limo rentals and a few other things. To steal the approach from my Brother-in-law, Sandy went out and put things together and I had veto power. Truth is though, there were very few things, if any, that I didn’t like.

So without getting into every single detail, we got married at 2pm on Sunday September 20, 2009. We opted to not see each other before the wedding, not because of superstition, but because we wanted to be surprised when we finally saw each other.

I made Jonathan, our son, the best man which worked out perfectly. He was great as always and really made me proud. We included him in the ceremony by giving him a necklace to symbolize his part in our marriage. We were really happy to make sure he was fully included. Later after the wedding when we got home it was great to hear him say “I’m never taking this necklace off”.

So the ceremony went without a hitch and so did the reading, pictures, and the reception. The band was great, the place was great and everyone had fun, but I think I’ll have to wait on giving more details since I’m currently on my honeymoon in Banff, Canada. Give me a rain check and I’ll post complete details about the wedding when I get a chance.

For now, just know I’m hitched! hehe and it’s a great thing. I’ll post some pictures of Banff soon. It’s amazing here.