We're here in the town of Banff, which is one of the most popular places to visit in all of Canada.
But it's also a great weekend escape from Calgary.
We're here at the Cave & Basin, a National Historic Site and also the birthplace of Parks Canada.
Admission is free with a Parks Canada Discovery Pass.
We learned how the cave, which is full of hot mineral spring water, was used as a spiritual
meeting place for indigenous peoples before three railway workers found it, inadvertently
creating Canada's first national park.
We took the Discovery Tour, which gave us in-depth knowledge on the history of the area,
as well as Banff's first hotel.
We even got to see the rare Banff Springs Snail, which is not found anywhere else on Earth
With the day winding down, we decided to spend the night at a peaceful mountain retreat with
a great Canadian atmosphere.
How sweet! mmm, looks good.
We then had dinner, starting with a board of smoked and cured meats served with aged
cheese before having grilled tenderloin, grilled bison striploin, and braised short rib.
It was delicious.
We capped off our night next to our in-room wood-burning fireplace.
It's a good thing we had a really delicious and filling breakfast at Buffalo Mountain
Lodge, because now we're doing a hike on Tunnel Mountain, which is actually the road that
the hotel is on - it's called Tunnel Mountain Road, so we thought we should do the hike,
as you can see, it's very beautiful.
It's actually the first time we've ever done this, it's one of the easier hikes as it only
takes a little over a half hour.
You can bring your family, your dog, whatever.
It's a beautiful day and really happy we came because this is the first time we've seen
this side of Banff.
So we made it to the top and you can see the beautiful town of Banff from up here,
the beautiful Rocky Mountains, and we can actually see our next hike of the day - Sulphur Mountain.
So there's actually the Banff Gondola just over there but we're gonna hike instead.
So we'll see how it goes.
Now we're at Sulphur Mountain.
This is where you'll find the Banff Gondola, but if you don't want to take the gondola
up, you can also hike up as well.
Should take about an hour and a half and that's what we're about to do right now, so let's go
So, as you can see, there's a little bit of snow, or quite a bit of snow on the trail,
so we bought these kleets.
With these sharp picks, it will help us to not slip.
I'm assuming, I'm actually not sure how to put them on, I'm assuming it's this way, with
the gloves you are so useless sometimes.
Then you just pull them over your shoes.
Well, they seem to be working well. I'm glad I brought them.
So we're about halfway up Sulphur Mountain now.
As you can see, the views are already amazing and we're not even at the top yet.
So according to other hikers, we only have 15 minutes left to the summit.
We just hope that's true because now it's getting hard on the legs.
Again, you know, we've been hiking up already like one hour and a half, so that's supposed
to be the time for this hike, and we're very excited to get there.
So, we're just gonna get there right at sunset, so I'm pretty excited to see which colours
we may see because we have clear skies so far.
And then one more thing, supposedly, after 5 PM, you can get the gondola free on the
way down, but we've seen other hikers coming down so I don't know if that has changed,
but we hope we can take the gondola on our way down.
We're actually just in time for sunset, literally.
We're here at the top of Sulphur Mountain, and it's really beautiful.
We made it just in time for sunset but we also made it in time for the gondola being closed.
Yes, we were really hoping to take the gondola down, but it's closed for some reason.
Usually, it's always open until sunset.
But anyway, we're enjoying this beautiful sunset that is just behind us.
These beautiful colours. and we had a great time spending the weekend here in Banff.
As you can probably see, we're getting a bit chilly.
I can hardly move my mouth and we have at least an hour walk back down, so we have to get going.
We hope you liked this episode on Banff, and if you want to learn more about Canada and
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Until next time...