Beautiful Banff

Jim and I had an amazing time in Banff!!! I can't say enough about how beautiful this town is and how much I would love to live there some day. Everything about our weekend was such a dream and even though I was on crutches I still made the most of it. We arrived in Calgary on Thursday and we spent the afternoon driving around just getting to know the town. I was a little disappointed in Calgary, I was expecting it to be similar to Colorado Springs in the sense that Colorado Springs is nestled up against the mountains. Calgary is a little over an hour from the mountains...not nestled up against the mountains. Between Calgary and Banff there is a lot of open space used mainly for farming, but also has rolling hills.

On Friday Jim and I slept in and then we headed up the mountain in a gondola to enjoy the view. It was rather cold on top of the mountain, but the views were amazing! We finished up the day back in Calgary where we watched the Calgary Flames take on the Nashville Predators...the flames lost but Jim thoroughly enjoyed the game and the people. Saturday was spent hanging around Banff and doing some shopping. Yes, even though I was on crutches I was still able to shop! When we woke up on Saturday morning I decided that I wasn't going to let those darn crutches ruin our weekend so I crutched around Banff all day. Of course I took a few pain killers during the course of the day though...to help with the arm pain of course. I even managed to wear Jim out walking around town! Moving on, Sunday was spent in Lake Louise and then back to Calgary to catch our flight home.

I decided during the weekend that Jim and I need to make this an annual trip. He came up with the idea of rotating seasons...summer one year, winter the next. We hope to go again next summer and I'm hoping to take Zach, Sam, Aaron, and Jimmy with us. The entire time we were in Banff I kept thinking to myself how much Zach and Sam would love this town and I can't imagine being there without them. I have numerous pictures to share with you, so sit back and enjoy the show.

Here are a few images from out hotel.

We stayed in a castle in Banff (The Fairmont Banff Springs), so here are a few images of the hotel. I have a better "airel" view later on during this post.

The next two pictures are of a "bus" used to take tourists to the columbian ice fields. We were very intrigued by the sheer size of this thing.

The following pictures were taken during our gondola ride.

This picture was taken on the gondola ride, and you can see our "castle in the woods". Its located in the bottom-center of the photo in case you can't see it.

This is downtown Banff.
Here I am at Lake Louise. Crutching my way to the lake....


This picture is a hockey rink on Lake Louise. The lake was frozen...allowing people full access to walk on water. Which included playing hockey on the lake, ice skating on the lake, and walking from end to the other. This was a completely different concept to me...one that was hard to comprehend.

Here's the ice skating rink that I mentioned above.

Here's Jim standing on the hockey rink.
And finally, here's me standing on the lake...something I've never done before.