FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX: Banff

Unfortunately our resort had a power failure last night thus this post is one day late...

All good things had to come to an end as we packed up to leave Lake Louise but before we did so, we had a very important task to do...walking Marcus, the hotel dog! The children had been booked in to walk Marcus, the 6 year old labrador, who failed guide dog training. He was truly like a coin-operated machine, only walking when he received a treat. He was a lovely dog, but stubbornly refused to budge at all once he decided it was treat time again. At the end, we weren't sure if the children walked him or if he walked them...

The Lake at 5:30am

It was a great buffet breakfast!

Time to meet Marcus

The friendly but "lazy" dog!

Marcus walks where Marcus wants to walk...

A bit worried when we were at the far end of the lake with only 1 treat left! We made it back to the hotel. Phew!

It was then time to move on to the pretty town of Banff. Boy was it crowded! We managed to squeeze in shopping and lunch and thought we would check out the gondola but the lines were horrendous. We stuck to our original plan of visiting Lake Minnewanka, another seemingly picture perfect blue lake. It is the largest lake in Banff National Park at 20km long and 2km at its widest. As it was so hot and crowded, we decided to give boating in a tinny a miss. No one really wanted to sit in the heat for 2 hours. Instead we shopped in a...supermarket! $10 for a 2kg punnet of big fat sweet blueberries?!?! I'll take it!

It was when we returned to our resort that we discovered there was a power outage. We were all forced to retire early which was probably not a bad thing as Malcolm has planned quite a few activities for us in Banff.