1 week down, 1 week to go!!!  :0(  (although can’t wait to see Bailey and Mishy again)

We decided to get up and leave Pocahontas Cabins early this morning, hoping that we may see some wildlife on the drive from Jasper to Banff.  With a distance of about 250km we stopped at the petrol station in Jasper to fill up with fuel for both the SUV and Us !!!

About half a kilometre before the petrol station we saw “The Elk Family”, a mum and dad with what we think was this year’s baby…. Sooo Sweet :0) (pics to follow on our Flickr link).

After re-fuelling we headed on the long journey back along the Icefields Parkway (Highway 93) towards Lake Louise and Banff.  About 20 minutes into the drive and we saw “The Mountain Goat Family”, again this year’s young with mum and dad.  Of course we stopped and took some more photographs.

Even though we had already driven this road in the opposite direction a couple of days beforehand, there were obviously things that we had missed or maybe just hadn’t noticed.  The light was certainly very different this morning, although making landscape photographs yet again rather difficult.

The journey was pretty uneventful, with a stop at Athabasca Falls and then another stop further along where one can see the actual Athabasca Glacier.

After about 8 hours we arrived in the town of Banff.  No it didn’t really take us 8 hours to drive 250km.  Not even with Canadian speed limits !!! :0)  It does however take 8 hours when you keep stopping to photograph various things, or just pull over to admire the stunning, in fact, breathtaking scenery.

Once we’d got into Banff we then had to find our hotel for the next 3 nights….  Thank god for modern technology as our SatNav guided us right to the front door, where we were allowed to check-in, albeit a little early.  The hotel is quite large and our room is enormous with 2 Queen size beds.  Now one thing to remember in Canada is that a Queen sized bed is in fact smaller than a Kingsize, but even so without two hairy hounds with us there is plenty of space indeed.

Seeing it’s 22:35 now we’re off to bed as another early start awaits us.  We’ll tell you tomorrow what we are up to, but just to say animals may be included…… :0)