Day One in the Canadian Rockies

So far it's been a great day. There has been a lot of driving, and we are both a little tired, but the scenery has made up for it and we got to our destination early.


Earlier I was blogging away at the coffee shop, as fun as that was we are now in our hotel in Fairmont Hot Springs - just outside of Banff (actually Kootenay National Park in British Columbia)




After getting a caffeine fix, we walked downtown Banff. The national parks are different in this strange land of 'Canada' compared to the US; there are actual towns within the park boundaries, yet another interesting fact that we have picked up. Maybe we should do a documentary for National Geographic. Here we are with a typical Banff icon:

The people of Canada have a very interesting view of keeping the peace. They have a force of peace officers called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Pretty impressive, right? I'm not sure what the mounted part means, I thought it meant riding a horse but we keep seeing all of these moose references and we're not sure. Anyway, all we know is the mounted police ride around in Ford cars (shocking since the Canadian government doesn't own any portion of that car company). We'll keep the camera ready for police riding Moose.







Anyway, basck to our trip. We stopped at the continental divide which is also the border between the provinces (and the parks).
That's me with a foot in two different Canadian provinces. It took us about three hours (including stops) to make it to our hotel in Fairmont Hot Springs, but we saw some excellent scenery; here is one of the turnoffs:
As impressive as the views are, we had a violent thunderstorm roll through. Instead of separate thunderclaps, there were so many lightning strikes it was basically a constant rumble. The hail was pea-sized. It was actually nice since it helped cool things off. Here is the view outside our room:Check out the hail collecting on the windshield wipers. Tomorrow is going to be a relaxing day at one of the hot springs pools. We'll keep you posted.