Banff Springs and Bow River

Today we continued our Banff Summer activity extravaganza. After mountain hiking/rafting yesterday we added golf and trail riding today. The crazy ones woke up early to watch the state of origin and first session of the cricket. The sane ones slept in until 630am before we all drove off to Banff. Expectations were high as Banff takes number one position on Malcolm's bucket list. It didn't let us down.

Banff Springs Golf Course...tick!

We formed a convoy of three golf carts and played the Tunnel Mountain 9 hole course which was just as pretty and well manicured as the championship 18 holes that it criss-crosses. We saw lots of Elk poo before finally finding the responsible Elk.

The quality of the golf didn't let us down. We played family Ambrose and went round with nine straight pars. The rental clubs were fantastic and we all had them working well by the end of the round. We saved our best tee shots for the final hole on the return to the clubhouse. We only had 140 yards left for our second on a 404 yard hole, but the adults managed to stuff up the final approaches. Fortunately, Elliot came up with a grandstand finish and knocked it on the green so we could end up even with the card.

And our convoy is off!

Jonah was content to "pretend" to drive

The children loved playing the beautiful course

Malcolm in action

Malcolm is also a hoon on the golf cart!

Elk!

Saviour of the last hole

Bow Falls

A quick barbecue meal of buffalo wings, burger patties, salad and sweet potato back in our hotel room was followed by a power nap for all. 1 hour and 10 minutes later Malcolm woke everyone up to hit the trail again. Our horse ride was along another pretty river, the Bow River. The only annoying thing was that they were running late hence we had to wait 45 minutes past our allocated time before we got started. There was some discussion as to what Malcolm's horse was actually named. Somehow, we didn't think "Tarago" was correct...Another highlight was that being on the golf cart and on a horse obviously was not detrimental to my step count which clocked in at nearly 13,000! Yeah!

My feet hurt from walking, my arms ache from rafting and my butt is sore from riding. It's a pity we couldn't do the road trip first and the cruise at the end! 2 more days and we have to return to reality.

Where we checked in for our trail ride

One of the gorgeous horses pulling the wagon 

Elliot and his horse, freckles

Jonah managed his horse, Caspar, really well!

Started off through the woods

Then walked by the water

Bow River

Heading back towards the stable