Lake Louise Day Trip August 07, 2007

Unfortunately this weeks MidWeek Mommy Camping Adventure was changed into a day trip due to impending rain from Calgary North to Jasper all the way East to Drumheller and warnings of the intensity of the smoke in Waterton National Park.

Now this MommyJ is just not into camping in the rain with two small children so call me crazy but a day trip seemed much more manageable.

Pit stopping at one of those photographic lookouts, Beaver & Baby J are posed with the Sawtooth Mountain (of the famous 1993 prescribed burn) in the background above and Castle Mountain below.

We headed out to Lake Louise to visit the beautiful lake, have a picnic lunch and enjoy someplace new. Well it turned out that everyone had the idea to stop in Lake Louise on the same day as it was packed with tourists.

Wisely I decided that if we ate at the hotel we could take advantage of their valet parking or parkade! I tell you after spending 15 harrowing minutes behind rental motor homes, people who have rental cars and are used to driving on the other side of the road (I certainly know how hard that can be after the Bahamas), and irritated people who just wanted to get out the car it was the best $15 I have spent in a long time!

We headed into the hotel only to find the line for high tea to be snaking around the lobby! Well no matter from previous trips we know that there is another lovely restaurant looking out onto the lake on the lower floor. We were off and running to the Victoria Room Restaurant for a lovely lunch. The children shared a fruit plate and pizza while I had a prosciutto and cheddar panini with a glass of wine which turned into a swimming pool for a fly reminiscent of the Alanis Morrissette song “Ironic”. Imagine how entertained the children were by the drunken fly swimming in my wine glass!

Our service while at the hotel was outstanding, the valet made the children feel like royalty opening their doors, the waitresses all came over to chat with the children and my wine glass was wisked off like it had ebola and replaced in the blink of an eye! What a lovely way to spend a few hours, I recommend it very highly.

BabyJ laughing and BeaverJ enjoying the scenery outside of the doors we are sitting next to!
The children in front of the famous Chateau Lake Louise Hotel
The often photographed Lake Louise not looking as spectacular on a cloudy day as usual but still fantastic in it's own right...

After a lovely little walk we decided to head off to Banff for some Ice Cream from the Cows shop and a pit stop at MommyShop as it is lovingly know. Blessedly the children fell asleep shortly outside of Lake Louise and I was able to take a more scenic less congested by road construction road along the BowValley Parkway. This proved invaluable several times, I was able to tour through some new campsites for possible get always including Castle Mountain and Johnson Canyon.

Of course because both children were asleep I came across wildlife along the road side including the below captured on film forever Big Horn Sheep. As you can see he was close enough to the road to get an excellent picture as this is a one way road and there was no other traffic behind me.

After a quick stop in Banff we headed back to our much loved Centennial Playground in Canmore for our picnic dinner and some quality playing. What a wonderful way to breakup the drive back to Calgary. While we would have loved to have been camping while doing all of these fun things when I awoke this morning to rain falling to hard it sounded like hail I was intensely thankful to be snug as bug in the house not a tent!

Best Wishes for your own adventures,
The J Crew