August 24 - Moving to Banff

The weather was even nicer today - warmer without hardly a cloud in the sky.  We hooked up the trailer and headed down to Banff, 150 miles south of Jasper.  We even got to see the top of Mount Edith Cavell.  She is a beautiful mountain.

This was our third trip on this part of the road, but could do it ten more times.

We stopped again at the Athabasca Glacier, this time to walk up to the toe of the glacier.  It was a steep hike, and once we got to the top a cold wind was blasting off the ice.

 A quick walk around the loop, and we were ready to get back to the warm truck.

Here's where the glacier extended to in 2000 - global warming at work.

There's our truck and trailer way down there - the little white spot in the middle of the picture.

 We were now on road that was new to us.  Even the view from the gas station was great!

Just north of Banff, we started seeing these overpasses that they've built for wildlife to cross the highway.  The roadside is fenced the whole way so that the caribou, elk, bears, wolves and cougars are funneled to these crossings.  They have set up trail cams to prove they worked, and are now building more overpasses and underpasses for the animals.  Pretty cool.

We set up camp, unloaded the motorcycle, and took a ride into Banff.  This is the high-rent tourist district.  Definitely a nice town that stays busy with tourism year-round.

Here's a view of town from an overlook that goes up to the ski lodge.

We got a kick out of these snowflake decorations.  Looked like they forgot to take them down, but then again there's only 3 months without snow so why bother!