Our sights were set on Glacier National Park, but sadly it was still thawing out (even in May) and much of it would be inaccessible. Glacier, we’ll be back for you one day!
Our plan switched to Banff National Park, back across the border into Canada. This meant a pretty drastic reroute and a 1000-mile drive, starting at Mount Rushmore. Two full days of driving took us down deserted highways… sometimes morphing into dirt roads… occasionally getting stuck behind snail-paced lorries in endless no-overtaking-zones. Needless to say, we exhausted our “Big Adventure” playlist a couple of times over. Jaws dropped when we pulled into small-town petrol stations that had never seen a Brit before.
Clouds hid the true nature of our surroundings when we first arrived at Banff town. Being pretty early in the season, we easily got a spot at Tunnel Mountain Village Campground, a favourite for Canadian school trips. It was a favourite for us, too – yes, it was a bit of a budget-breaker, but the setting was stunning. As the clouds lifted, they revealed the looming mountains encompassing the town like silent giants.
A shuttle bus from the campground took us everywhere we needed to go: first into Banff town, as a starting point for the trail up Sulphur Mountain. Banff is a pristine example of your classic Alpine town. Steak restaurants and sports gear stores lie behind timber facades; adorable market stalls offered craft beer and good hiking advice; natural hot springs filled with locals and tourists alike. Most of the workers we met were Australians and Brits spending a season in Banff with their working visas. Each one of them had the muscular physique of someone who squeezes in as many mountain sports around their job as they can…
The epic view from Sulphur Mountain’s peak showed us what we were contending with for the rest of our stay. Hot coffees (served up by a Brit, of course) at the top were our reward for the chilly 2-hour hike. If you wait until 7 o’clock like we did, you can save your knees from the downhill hike, as the cable car to the bottom is free from then on.
Back at the campground, Aleks and I were puzzling over how best to carry a load of firewood up to our campsite from the campground’s log pile. Like a fairy godfather, a kind Canadian named Jerry appeared with his van and offered to drive them up for us! As an added bonus, he somehow had vast amounts of beer going spare in his van too, continually thrusting cans into our hands to fuel our log-loading… we ended up with a huge pile of wood and a matching pile of beer cans. Jerry, if you’re reading this, we salute you!
Banff may have been less frozen than Glacier that time of year, but it was still pretty damn cold, especially when we thought about toasty Arizona from just a month before. We could still hike up through Johnston Canyon and up to the Ink Pots, and around Lake Louise, but we couldn’t make it up to Agnes Tea House, another of Banff’s classic treks. Next time we’re in Banff, we’ll go in July!
For fans of getting off the beaten track, Kananaskis Country is perfect. You’ll have the trails virtually to yourself, and the scenery is arguably better than in Banff National Park. One of the happiest hikes of our whole adventure was here, trekking the circumference of Upper Kananaskis Lake. OK, the lake itself is artifical, but the surrounding peaks are jaw-dropping (and real). The road that led us back out of the mountains was even more extraordinary: for me, the number one drive of the trip so far. We even saw a lanky moose gingerly crossing the road right in front of us!
There’s no way we’re not returning to Banff at some point. To say it was a highlight of our trip is a massive understatement… this place is surely going down in the top 3!
The Big Adventure 
Beautiful! I love it.
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