Wednesday June 11th
Brunch
Today we decided to spend the day around town and take it easy. We slept in and had a slow morning getting ready before hopping on our bikes and biking to town for brunch. We ate at Tooloulous, a Louisiana themed restaurant. They had so many breakfast options, it was hard to pick! Pretty much every style of pancake, waffle and french toast you could think of! I went with a strawberry and chocolate waffle and Tyler got french toast coated in Cinnamon Toast Crunch and deep fried. They both were amazing!
Shopping and the Banff Sign
After brunch, we hit the town and went shopping for some souvenirs. The town of Banff is so cute and we loved just walking around. We made sure to buy a new bottle of Ice Wine from the Wine Store and then got back on our bikes. Our plan was to bike to the Banff Gondola and take a ride. However, after two attempts, we realized that even with E-bikes, we were not going to make it up the steep hill you had to take to get there. We changed gears and biked along the river to the Banff sign to get some pictures. A few people were there in line, which worked out great because everyone was helping to take each other’s pictures.
We then headed back to our campsite to get the jeep to drive to the gondola. In total we biked about 14 miles, so our easy day was a bit more work than we planned.
Dog Park Break
Tyler was smart and checked if there were any tickets available before we left and lucky he did because there were not any for a few hours. We decided to buy tickets for later and in the meantime take the dogs to a local dog park. This dog park was the most fortified dog park I have ever seen! I am guessing that they take extra precautions to keep the animals out. It was also one of the nicest dog parks we have ever been to. It had beautiful views, trees, and grass covered hills. It had a walking path around the whole park.
Banff Gondola
We tired out the pups and then drove back to the campsite. We dropped them off and headed to the gondola. I was really excited for the gondola, because everything I had read said that it was incredible. Unfortunately there were some wild fires in the area, so it was really smokey and visibility was not great. Tyler and I decided to make the most of it and hopped in the gondola and headed up the mountain.
While the views were not great, it was still really cool to be going up the mountain like that. We got to the top and went to look around. They had some interesting history about Banff that we read through and then we walked the boardwalk to look at some big horn sheep that were hanging around. We also saw some very well fed chipmunks, that were so big, I thought they were squirrels at first!
We had to wait a little while before we could head back down the mountain so we got a snack and a drink. I got a Maple Chai Latte which was incredible and I need to find a way to bring them to the US. We explored the rest of the building and then it was time to take the gondola back down.
I am not going to lie, I was really disappointed that we did not have good views, because I would imagine it is absolutely gorgeous up there on a clear day! It is on my list to try again the next time we come to Banff. By the time we got back to the campsite, I had a really bad headache, so I went to bed pretty early, wanting to rest up for our last day.