607. Rockies Roadtrip | Day 18 - Maligne Lake and Canyon

On our final day in Jasper, we visited Maligne Lake and Maligne Canyon. This was a pretty relaxing and slow-paced day..with our trip already coming to a close. We were the unluckiest with seeing wildlife on this trip, but we did see a black bear for (literally) a split second on the way to the lake. We started off our day with breakfast, at the same spot we went to every morning in Jasper:

I love these small town breakfast spots. Lots of interesting locals there lol. Most of who I found to be quite strange..though we also spotted a "diamond in the rough" ;)

In a previous post I mentioned we were staying in McBride which was a two hour drive each way into Jasper. We did some stops along the way which made the drive slightly less tedious. That morning we stopped at Rearguard Falls.


Chinook salmon are my favourite/the tastiest!

The current was so powerful. We were able to get quite close to the falls as you can see...it made me a bit nervous as the waves were incredibly strong, crashing against the rocks, but it was also an exhilarating feeling to stand there watching. I wasn't able to spot any salmon though.




This lake was a really unique shade of blue. I wasn't quite able to capture it on camera..


Then we arrived at Maligne Canyon!




At Maligne Lake. It was kind of a disappointment for me as unfortunately we weren't able to go to Spirit Island..which is the usual postcard image of the lake. We just walked around here a bit and went for ice cream lol.

I just realized I forgot to include our lunch and dinner from the Columbia Icefield day. So this was my lunch..& for dinner we went to a nice restaurant called Syrahs of Jasper.


This innocent little intermezzo quickly became the (hilarious) topic of the rest of our evening...and then the rest of the trip hahaha. It will have to remain as an inside joke so I won't reveal it here. ;)


This was the main which was a vegan "shepherds pie" which I didn't really like.



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605. Rockies Roadtrip | Day 17 - Columbia Icefield & Glacier Skywalk

I am very slowly (but surely) reaching the end of my Rockies Roadtrip posts! Lol. Just a few more days left. It has been so long now I don't really remember all the details that clearly from the final days. On our second day in Jasper (or I should say, McBride) we visited the Columbia Icefield and Glacier Skywalk. It was quite an adventure.

In the morning we started making the ~5hr drive to the Icefield, with a stop in Jasper. Along the way we started to run out of gas. We began making plans to hitchhike to the nearest gas station and back if our car stopped. Worst part was that on the entire stretch of the highway, there was no cell phone reception so we couldn't call for help if we wanted to. That was one of the most nerve-wracking moments of the trip. The gas light kept flashing and we were at the final moments when we were able to pull into the Icefield parking lot. We went in to the centre to ask the information desk for help on what to do. At that moment was the luckiest moment of our trip. Connected to the centre is a hotel, and the guy calmly told us to go there as they sold gas. We were instantly relieved and went to purchase some for maybe double the price that it would have been at a gas station. I think we bought half a tank? But then the guy who filled it up for us did it all the way so we got lucky again hahah.

After that we were off to the Icefield. We went on these huge buses that brought us on a ~15min drive onto the glacier. At the glacier we had maybe 20 minutes to walk around and collect some glacier water.








I think our guide told us he knew someone who went hiking up there and came across a cougar's den which I actually thought was pretty cool..though dangerous for him lol.


Up ahead you can see a very steep incline (a lot steeper than it looks in pictures)


After the Icefield, we headed to the skywalk. I was pretty excited for this as I've never been on a skywalk before and this was something new for me (as it wasn't built the last time I visited here). The views were amazing. My friend and I each took a rock from here as a souvenir hahah.








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599. Rockies Roadtrip | Day 15 - Calgary

On day 15, we arrived in Calgary. After several days fully immersed in nature, we were starting to miss the city life. So our short one night stay in Calgary was a nice change of scenery. It's a pretty small city and very quiet (compared to Toronto) so it only took us a quick few hours to walk around the whole city. It was nice to go at a slower pace and relax for a bit though.




First we walked around the park which was right beside our hotel (Sheraton Suites Eau Claire) then from there we walked all the way to the downtown core which I guess is Stephen Avenue; a pedestrian-only street lined with restaurants and patios.






For lunch I had the most delicious lobster mac and cheese I've ever had!! Actually this was probably my first ever mac and cheese with lobster, but it was really good.

After lunch, we walked around and didn't really know what else to do. So we decided to go to our favourite spot..Cactus Club for drinks. As you know, I love Cactus Club (just had dinner there tonight lol) and in Vancouver we visited multiple times in various locations pretty much every day. However our experience here was the worst. Actually it was the worst dining service I've ever received in my life. I won't go into full detail on what happened as we did end up getting in touch with management and they were nice to rectify the situation in some way. We were just unlucky to get the worst server. I still love Cactus Club and would recommend it.

After that, we went back to our hotel for the hors d'oeuvres and cocktails hour (we had upgraded to a Club floor suite which included that). It was really nice. I brought my laptop as well to work there in the club lounge. We sat for several hours then left for some drinks at Fionn MacCool's (which was attached to our hotel) for another couple of hours where we had some nice memorable chats.

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598. Rockies Roadtrip | Day 13 & 14 - Banff - Top of Sulphur Mountain

Day 13 and 14 are combined together in this post because for day 13 we didn't do anything at all/I didn't take any photos. Day 13 was when I got food poisoning and luckily the same day we decided to take a full day's rest, just stay in and not do any touring. Easily the worst day of the trip. The internet at our hotel was extremely slow, and I felt extremely sick..but I still had to work so it meant my work took at least triple the time it normally would have. Then in the evening we decided to head out for dinner (but I wasn't able to eat much). We went to a nice restaurant named Graze where our waiter was very cute and looked like a young Patrick Dempsey.

The next morning we headed into Banff to go on the gondola up to Sulphur Mountain. The views are amazing up there and I really enjoyed it! Just a bit disappointed we didn't see any mountain goats :(

Actually before we went up the mountain we went to the Cave and Basin National Historic Site. I expected it to be an actual cave to walk around explore (I had been to a massive and very impressive one in China before so I had the same expectations)..but this one was really just this in the photo below. We went in and out within 3 minutes lol.



Then we took a gondola up to the top of Sulphur Mountain to walk around and take in some amazing views. I don't think I went up there the previous time I came to Banff.




Can you find the person in this pic?





On a Lake Minnewanka cruise. When we were buying the gondola ticket up to Sulphur Mountain, we decided to purchase a package which included the Banff gondola, the Columbia Icefields tour in Jasper, and a lake cruise (from Brewster) - either Lake Minnewanka or Maligne Lake. To be honest before that day I never even heard of Lake Minnewanka...but I had been really excited to go to Maligne Lake to see Spirit Island. Our ticket sales guy told us that the Maligne Lake cruises were unfortunately fully booked up every day for every time slot until October..so we had no choice but to do the Lake Minnewanka cruise instead. I didn't really enjoy it that much. Well I like boat cruises so it was nice but not worth the price as there wasn't anything that special about the lake (in my opinion) and nothing to see. Anyway, a few days later we visited Maligne Lake and saw the boat cruises leaving and they weren't even full! So we were pretty disappointed about that/having been forced to go on the Lake Minnewanka cruise instead..and in the end never ended up seeing Spirit Island (as it's only accessible by boat)


I'd love to return to Banff sometime in the winter..would be so nice and cozy




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