Dateline: Banff, Alberta. The local joke is that Banff is an acronym, standing for Be Aware, Nothing’s For Free. It is more or less true, the place has to make most of its living in the two months of (mostly) decent weather when everybody comes here. I say “mostly” because today it is cool, rainy and not great for outdoor activities. So, things are expensive and not much is free.
Yesterday, on the other hand, was glorious: blue skies, no wind, warm temperatures, there were even hardy Canadians swimming in the glacier-melt rivers and lakes. Being glacier-melt does funny things to the water, makes it milky with suspended rock flour. Glaciers grind rock flour off the underlying rocks and it is so fine it stays suspended for a long time.
We took a three hour float trip down the Bow River starting right by the falls in front of the Banff Springs Hotel, arguably one of the most imposing-looking buildings in North America. It is designed to look like the home of a Scots nobleman and for sure the setting looks something like the Scots highlands, only grander.
We were told the story that the hotel was designed to face the street with most rooms having a view of the river and falls, and was laid out backwards so most rooms face the street and the front looks out at the river and falls. Supposedly the architect was out of town when the foundation was laid and they simply did it backwards. I have no idea whether this story is true or apocryphal.
The raft trip was great, we didn’t see many animals but the riding conditions were near-perfect: lots of water, no wind, knockout sunshine, and spectacular views of the mountains. One reason we saw few animals is that we were sharing the river with a group of rafts carrying drunks singing French-Canadian voyageur canoe-paddling songs. They likely scared the animals away.
The rafts were somewhat lower-tech than those used on the Snake, but did the job just fine. I remembered to wrap my wallet in a plastic bag so it stayed dry. One thing I did learn from our guide/boatman is that these mountains are young and made of relatively soft sedimentary stone: limestone, shale, etc. While the beautiful conditions we see in Banff and Jasper will last thousands of years, they won’t last long in geologic time as they will erode relatively fast compared to granite.
Earlier in the day yesterday we took a drive and saw a young black bear, scores of pan-handling mountain goats, two young bucks in velvet, and a couple of cow elk. We also saw more ground squirrels and chipmunks than you could reasonably count, and yes, we saw people feeding these and the goats. Canada hasn’t been as tough on feeding wild animals as the U.S. Park Service has.
I summer in the U.S. Rockies and rarely see bears; it would be a rare trip to the Canadian Rockies when I don’t see a bear and these trips are normally brief – a week or two. Bear are much easier to see in Canada than in the States, I’m not sure why. Maybe there are simply more of them, because the Canadians are more willing to coexist with bears and tolerate the risks inherent therein.
Speaking of bears and Canada, a couple of days ago we saw what is probably the most exotic license plate in North America, that of the Northwest Territories. Instead of being rectangular it is shaped like the profile of a polar bear walking on all fours. I hope the other DrC will post a picture of it at http://cruztalking.blogspot.com. The whole Northwest Territory probably doesn’t have 50,000 people in it, and a lot of those are Cree who rarely leave, so seeing this plate is, to say the least, unusual and a treat.
We can see that the recession has hurt the tourist business in Alberta, there are hotels and B&Bs with “Vacancy” signs. The campground our RV is parked in, usually full, has vacancies as well. Banff townsite isn’t as busy as we’d expect either; for one thing, the usual hordes of Asian tourists are missing.
