Banff, Canada - Day One

On Friday we left Calgary and drove to Banff.  One of our first stops was the Pez store.  Aunt Jessica has brought Pez back for the kids before and so they were excited to see it for themselves.  The entire back wall of the store was filled with different Pez characters.  Max kept changing his mind every couple of minutes about which one he was going to get.  In the end Liza choose a Hello Kitty, Max got Yoshi and Vanner got a brown dog from the movie Pets.  The kids loved them.  They played with them in the car, carried them on hikes and basically never wanted to put them down.

Our first bear sighting in Banff.

After lunch and Pez shopping we headed to Johnston Canyon for some waterfall hikes.  The trail was a little icy, but not bad, and the kids did a great job hiking.

It was during this hike that Max started asking, "Are we in the real Canada?"  I would respond "yes" and he would say, "I can't believe it, the real Canada!"  He asked that question at least a few times a day while we were there.  Very funny.

The beauty of the off season is no crowds to compete with.

Vanner was fascinated with stairs on this trip and wanted to walk up any stairs he found, by himself of course.

After Johnston Canyon we went back into town for a view of the Banff Hotel.

We scrambled down an unmarked trail to get closer to the river and enjoyed the peace and quiet for a while before calling it a day.

Banff, Canada - Getting there

We left for Calgary on a Thursday morning.  Not sure about what morning traffic might bring we tried to give ourselves plenty of time to get to Ally's house so she could drop us off at the airport and we wouldn't be rushed through security.  We sailed on the freeway and ended up at the airport with more than enough time.  Then, unfortunately, the delays started showing up.  First it was an hour, then two and finally three hours delayed.  The kids did pretty well but hanging out at the airport for five hours wasn't really what any of us had in mind.  We ended up needing to get the airplane entertainment that I packed out well before we even got on the airplane.

While we waited we walked around the airport a lot.  The lady at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory insisted I needed a picture of the kids in front of this bear and she also gave us a few free gold chocolate coins so that was a pretty good situation.

The other upside was that the airline rolled out a cart of free snacks.  Our daily intake of fruit snacks, chex mix and cheese crackers was definitely met.  And as a side note...Max calls pretzels "krentchels", it is pretty cute.

We finally made it on the plane and enjoyed an uneventful fly in the sky.

When we arrived they had lost our stroller so we waited in the airport a bit longer to figure that out, got the rental car, ate some dinner and then fell asleep for the night with anticipation of fun adventures to come.