After a day trip out east to Drumheller, the next day we headed out west to Banff. I'm going
to show you our visit to the Yamnuska wolfdog sanctuary first where we actually went to on a
separate day, but I figured that I'd include it here because it is on the way to Banff.
The sanctuary was established in 2011 to raise awareness and educate the public on wolfdogs and
wolves. It is currently home to 33 permanent wolfdogs. We booked the interactive tour so
that we could get a little more up close and personal. The first enclosure they took us into
kept the high-content wolf dogs. A high-content wolfdog means that it is mostly wolf genes,
so something like 75 percent or more wolf would be high content. There's also mid-content and then low
content which is mostly dog. Contrary to popular belief wolves are very timid and afraid of humans
so these high-content wolfdogs were not interested in coming near us at all.
In the second enclosure were lower content wolfdogs so they are more likely to come
up to people. Our guide gave us some treats
to hold out and one of the wolf dogs came by to gobble them up.
After the tour we had some time to walk around the rest of the sanctuary.
Now we'll head towards the rocky mountains.
To visit Banff National Park you have to purchase a park pass
which you can get either at the entrance or online.
Banff National Park is actually Canada's first national park established in 1885. There are so
many things you could do here and see that ideally you would spend a few nights here.
In the morning we visited the famous Lake Louise. In early May when we went it was still frozen
over so you couldn't see that classic turquoise water but it was still beautiful nonetheless.
After sufficient admiring of the lake we drove back down to the town of Banff for lunch.
Except that we didn't have time to sit down anywhere for lunch before our next activity
so we ended up just grabbing some McDonald's.
I was very excited for our afternoon activity - we had booked a one-hour horseback ride
tour with Banff Trail Riders. Apparently, Banff Trail Riders is the second-largest
outfitter in North America after one in the states. We checked in,
got our helmets and went around to look at the horses before the tour started.
At the beginning of the tour, we were instructed on how to steer the horses
then each got assigned one and were helped up onto the saddles.
For the first half of the ride, we walked through a bunch of trees but soon we came out onto a trail
right by the river with a stunning view of the mountains in the background.
By the time we were done we were pretty tired and our hips and legs sore because
we were clearly not very flexible. so we headed to a place called Three Bears Brewery
and Restaurant where we had peach-infused beer and a really good elk sausage pizza.