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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!

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