In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies

After Glacier NP, our next destination were the Candian Rocky Mountains, where we stayed at three beautiful campgrounds in Kootenay NP, Lake Louise, and Banff NP. Kootenay NP is mainly located at the west side of the mountain range, and the campground is on a hill next to the town of Radium Hot Springs. Like the name suggests, hot water is coming out of the earth along a fault line, and is feeding two swimming pools, one of them 105° (40°C) hot. The campgound is sprawling with wildlife:

From Kootenay, we drove up the Columbia valley and across the continental divide to Banff NP on the east side of the Rockies.

The Columbia valley in British Columbia, Canada.

Across the Rocky Mountains, eastbound on the Trans Canada Highway.

Our next stop was a large campground at Lake Louise, where we had our first (and so far only) bear sighting. One morning, Benjamin was looking out the trailer window and suddenly said: "I see a bear walking down the road", and I responded: "yeah, sure, and a kangaroo next to it!" But it was true - there was a two-year old male black bear (as we learned later from a park ranger who we reported the bear to), who had decided that the campground was a nice and unchallenged area to roam around and feed from the huckleberry bushes there. We got out of the trailer and tried to follow the bear at a respectful distance, but he decided that he didn't like us and disappeared in the forest before we could even get the camera ready.

Lake Louise and the adjacent Moraine Lake are arguably among the most majestic sceneries in all of the Rocky Mountains, most famous for their incredible colors beneath the backdrop of  countless 10,000+ ft mountain peaks. Pictures can only give a less than perfect idea of how impressive these lakes are.

Doesn't this look as if the photo was made in a studio before a picture wall?

After Lake Louise, we spent three nights in Banff, the "capital" of the national park. Although the town's only purpose was and is tourism, it is still a relatively quaint mountain village. But everything is incredibly expensive; in the town's best steak house, for example,  a NY strip costs $45, plus sides, of course. We found a nice French restaurant with decent prices that offered the "real" French food, probably thanks to the Franco-Canadian influence from far-away eastern Canada.

 Who finds the McDonalds in this photo?

The main road in Banff, Alberta, Canada.