I went to Banff and took some photos

I took a lot of photos, actually.  I have selected a few from the very, very many I took.  

I think this is my favorite one. 

It's Lake Louise in the morning, and from the trail that wraps around the lake, right before the elevation gain starts.  

But before we get to Lake Loiuse, we have to go through some other parts of the national park.  

On our first day inside, we went to Lake Minnewanka. 

 

Very pretty, doesn't have the glacial lake color, but very pretty nonetheless.  We didn't spend much time at this lake.  

 

I did see this tree full of birds! 

 

 

We immediately went to Johnston Canyon, and did the hikes.  We didn't go all the way to the Ink Pots, but we saw tons of waterfalls.  

 

 

 

 

And then we went to Lake Loiuse.  We heard parking was tough to get, but figured since we were heading in during the late afternoon, people might be heading out.  We ended up getting a spot, luckily.  It was very, very crowded.  

Lots of people taking photos by the shore, lots of people in the water, and lots of people on the hike to the closer of the two teahouses. 

 

 

 

 

 

The color of the lake is unreal.  Photos don't really convey how strange it is to see such a large body of water in that particular color.   

The next day, we were lucky enough to get parking at Lake Louise again.  That may have been because we woke up very early with the intention of making it to the parking lot at 7am.  My dad promised me and my mom we'd be going on "just a four mile hike", as the day before we had hiked about 12 miles.  

We made it to the top of the hike, and had already gone four miles.  And still had to go back down.  We ended up taking a different way down that added... a few miles.  By the time we were back at the car, we had hike twelve miles total, again.  

Oops!  

On the second day, I took more macro photos instead of lake photos.  

 

 

 

 

Part one: 

 

 

Part two!

After we headed out of Lake Louise on the second day, we went to Lake Peyto.  It's the same surreal color, but the viewpoint is from a very high elevation, not the lakeshore.  I think this photo almost conveys the unreal scale this entire national park exists at. 

Lake Peyto's glacier:

 

 

When we got back to Banff, we went to the river and looked at the lodge.  

 

 

 

 And the river, which happened to be at the river.  

 

The next day (third) was our last day in Banff.  On the way out, we drove up to a viewpoint where you could see the whole town. The wildfires were still burning, and there was still a lot of smoke. 

 

 

 

We also took a chairlift up Mt. Norquay.   Still pretty hazy up at the top. 

 

Going back down the mountain:

 

 

 

There's a bear in this photo, by the way.  It was very far away -- this was taken with a 90mm lens. 

 

(It's right in the center, that light brown smudge). 

Additional wildlife photos include these fighting squirrels (they were not sniffing each other with friendly interest -- immediately started knocking each other around after this shot):

 

 And here's a deer that was running across the road at a lookout point in Banff: 

 

 

 

And some longhorn sheep!  I didn't get very good photos of them, unfortunately.  But there were a bunch right by the highway.  Everyone was slowing down to get pictures. 

The trip was very fun.  Very tiring, but very fun.  We ended up doing quite a lot in a short amount of time.