Me, Myself and I

Well, this is the first part of my trip that I have been on my own, without family or friends around. At first I got home sick, but after a few phone calls home to Fort William and Naramata and meeting new people and making some friends, the homesickness was gone!

I have been in Banff for over three weeks, I got myself a volunteering job in the HI Hostel, 4 hours work a day and I got a free bed for the night, worked out perfectly for me! Banff is a beautiful place and has lots of nature trails and forestry tracks, so I spent my days walking in the hills and my evenings working. I had a couple of evenings off so I went to see Harry Potter and Hairspray at the cinema with friends from the hostel and had a boozy night in the hostel pub with the rest of the volunteers! It was Banff’s Summer Arts Festival while I was there, so I went to see lots of plays, theatre performances and bands playing in the park!

I got a loan of a mountain bike and took a ride to The Cascade Ponds, Minnewanka Lake, Two Jack Lake and Johnston Lake! It took me four hours to complete this bike ride, I must have covered 15 – 20 kames and my butt was so sore the next day… I did however manage to avoid any bears that may have been roaming about, which I am very happy about! There have been lots of bear warnings up in Banff and the surrounding areas, and there have been a couple of bear attacks, on the same trails I have been walking and riding on… So I am very bear aware!

I took a day trip to Lake Louise and walked up to the Plain of Six Glaciers Tea Hut at a height of 2090 meters, it was built in 1927 by two Swiss Guides for the Canadian Pacific Rail. At the beginning of the summer season a helicopter flies in as many supplies as they can and that is the only time the helicopter does this, the rest of the season they rely on the staff to carry in more supplies! To this day the tea hut has no electricity and the people who work at the tea hut, work for 5 days in a row and live around the tea hut in little wooden cabins, they hike in and out on their days off, it is a 10.6 km roundtrip and when they leave the cabin they take rubbish with them and when they return to the cabin the take food and supplies with them.

I went to the famous Banff Hot Springs to relax and ease my sore muscles after my hike at Lake Louise, it is more like a very hot (40c) swimming pool as it has been modernised.

My Auntie Carolyn, Glen and John all came to Banff for Frobisher at we all stayed at the Banff Centre, Frobisher is an opera that John composed. We spent a few days together in Banff before I headed to Edmonton with Glen and John.