Beautiful Banff

The mountains continue to amaze me. This is the road towards Banff from Jasper. A fabulous drive.

This bridge is one of the few especially for large wildlife to cross the road safely. Moose, Elk, Deer, Wolves, Coyote, Bears and Cougar are all seen using the bridges regularly via web cam.

The town of Banff itself despite the many shops, restaurants etc. had a charming character. We stayed in the Tunnel Mountain 11 campsite which had a bus every 20-40 minutes into town.
We enjoyed two great dinners, one in the Youth Hostel, a really fantastic place to stay to experience Banff on a budget and a Canadian themed up market restaurant in town, the Maple Leaf Grille.

Banff too, has it's chateau like hotel, the Fairmont Banff Springs. Rooms from $337.00. Cheaper in the campsite!
These castle like hotels were owned by the railways, in this case, Canadian Pacific.

This is the view from the hotel. A nice bit of landscaping!

We took the Banff gondola to the top of Sulphur mountain and then climbed to the old weather station via wooden steps to get this magnificent view of the valley.

Continuing my quest to see wildlife (from a distance), we took the Bow Valley parkway, a forested road.

Despite driving both ways in, unfortunately, poor weather, we only saw this Elk. Not the wild setting I imagined but he was after the leaves and ignoring all the camera happy tourists.