Well our prayers came true – we woke up to a beautiful blue sky day in Banff.

Today is pretty much a rest day on our tour, and therefore up to us to explore the town.  Kerrina has one word…  SHOPPING!

There are plenty of little boutique stores here, as well as your fair share of souvenir shops.  Prices are pretty reasonable too.

Our hotel here in Banff is right beside the Bow River.  There is a canoe hire place next door so tonight we are going to hire a canoe for a couple of hours and explore some of the wildlife and scenery.  Hopefully we don’t fall in because as the tour guide jokingly said yesterday – “you can’t drown in our rivers… because you will freeze to death first”. 

We will keep you posted, but if you don’t hear from us any more, you know where to look for the icicles!

Today was the official first day of our second tour which takes us across the Rockies towards Vancouver.

It started out with a bus tour of Calgary, which took us to places such as “The Saddle Dome” and Stampede Park – both of which feature heavily in the annual Calgary Stampede, and in the 1988 Winter Olympics.

Speaking of the Calgary Olympics, on the way out of Calgary we stopped at the Canada Olympic Park – where some of the more important events at the games took place – like the Ski Jumping, Luge and most important of all… the track where the Jamaican Bobsled team shot to fame.

We then continued on along the Trans-Canadian highway towards the Banff National Park.  The landscape very quickly changed from rolling plains to the jagged heights of the Rocky Mountains.  Absolutely breathtaking.

We arrived in Banff about midday for lunch – then went up the Sulphur Mountain Gondola.  Back in Calgary it was 12 degrees… and at 7500 ft on the top of Sulphur Mountain in the rain and wind it would have been close to freezing.  But the view was well and truly worth the climb.

Later that evening we took the bus out of Banff about 20 minutes to a town called Canmore – home of the “Oh Canada Eh!” dinner show.  Was a great night – not exactly Broadway (the cast also serve you dinner), but definitely was good fun.

And most importantly, Kerrina got to see/hug/touch/have a photo with her first Mountie.

Tomorrow we have a full day in Banff to explore – hopefully the weather gets a bit better because it is raining pretty heavily tonight.

The shortest border crossing…, originally uploaded by Paul Woods.

The big Island is the USA, the Small Island is Canada (or is it the other way around, I can’t remember)