Banff

The last week of June we had the opportunity to go to Banff, Canada. Shane has always wanted to go up to Banff. It is about 2 hours northwest of Calgary. It is in the heart of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and is a National Park in Canada. We had to get passports because neither of us have traveled outside the US except for a cruise we did about 4 years ago and we were able to use our birth certificates. Well when we were applying for our passports, I mentioned it to a couple of friends and they would get excited for us and ask where we were going-ummm Canada! Yeah-it didn't sound too exciting to me, I would much rather say Paris, London, Germany, Italy or somewhere in the Caribbean, but sadly this time it was Canada. Well as it turns out, Canada is beautiful! We went up to Banff for a medical conference for Shane which was a bonus because his work paid for his hotel expenses and his flight. We had a great time hiking (I know right?), seeing many of the beautiful lakes and glaciers, staying in a beautiful old hotel that I found out later was rumored to be haunted, seeing wildlife-we saw moose, elk, a coyote which I yelled from the car "wolf, wolf!" I was the designated wildlife spotter on this particular drive. Shane about died. He couldn't believe our luck to find a wolf, ha! ha! Too funny, but the coyote was eating some sort of small animal. We were so close (but safe in our car) to hear the bones crunching! We also saw rocky mountain sheep. They were so amazing and agile. They were able to go straight up steep rocky inclines. It was amazing. The one animal we did not see that would have been cool was a bear. We hear rumors of bear sightings, but we never personally saw one. To be honest I was a little freaked out.  Here are some of the beautiful pictures we took:

Lake Louise (the white that is at the top of the picture is mostly a glacier, but in the picture it looks like clouds-cool huh?)
              Lake Louise
The Fairmont Baniff Springs- our "Haunted" hotel

Shane looking at the Bow Falls which were directly below our hotel
  Us at the Bow Falls

Us at Emerald Lake-we did a hike around this lake that was about 3 miles, it was so pretty
Us at Moraine Lake-this was my favorite lake because of the color of the lake and the backdrop-so unbelievable. It was so pretty that there was a bride there that day in strapless wedding dress getting her bridals done. Talk about cold!
Rochelle at Moraine Lake
Shane at Moraine Lake-check out the view!
Lake Louise-this was at the opposite end of the lake looking back at the "Chauteau"

Ok-enough for now, but I have a lot of other pictures to post about this trip.