Category: National Parks & Monuments

On our 3rd and 4th days at West Glacier we enjoyed a mix of daytime hiking and afternoon swimming & paddling on Lake McDonald.

The other half of our Glacier National Park exploration would be done through the West Glacier entrance.  This time we wouldn’t be adventuring alone.  We were meeting up with old friends to catch up and enjoy the outdoors together.

When we planned this trip to Glacier National Park we did not expect there to still be so much snow at the park in July.  However, about a week before our arrival the park got a dump of snow which meant some road and trail closures.  You just never know with weather but we made the best of it.

We were now headed to Waterton Lakes International Peace Park which is the Canadian side of Glacier National Park.  How great that two countries can share the upkeep of such a special piece of land.  

On our journey to the park we were able to stock up a little on fresh veggies.  Once in the park there would only be tiny grocery stores which we were guessing wouldn’t have a lot of fresh things.

It was our last day at Banff and we decided to take another gondola ride at Sunshine Meadows ski resort for another great view.  We even ended up finding a hidden gem along our last day journey.

This would be the hottest day of our Banff stay with weather in the 70’s and full sun.  We thought it would be a perfect day to get out the paddle boards and put them on the water! We chose Johnson Lake as it’s the warmest lake at Banff and as such is the only lake that is comfortable for swimming.

The weather was turning from 40’s to the 70’s and we were looking forward to getting to take our rain jackets off.  The day looked clear as well which meant good views. Our plan for the day was to ride the Banff Gondola and then explore the city of Banff a bit more.

We woke wanting to explore more of the beauty that Banff National Park held! We were excited to see some of Banff’s iconic lakes and hike to one of its alpine tea houses.

We decided to keep the girls on US Pacific Time rather than switching them to Mountain Time.  This meant we were getting up a bit on the late side but getting to enjoy later evenings.  Despite the “late” starts in the morning we were luckily able to find parking and take our planned hikes. For our first full day in the park we decided to explore Johnson Canyon and Cave & Basin.

We were all excited to be visiting Banff National Park, Alberta for a full 6 days!  There was so much to do and it would also give us some downtime.  Banff is a unique National Park to those we have visited in the past as the large and busy town of Banff is actually within Banff National Park boundaries.