The beauty of the stars glistening in the sky overhead was slightly interrupted throughout the night by trucks passing on the nearby highway. We woke with the sun, the air cooler and more crisp than on other mornings, and I began packing up camp immediately as Dani prepared us a quick breakfast. We had one mission: make it to the Lake Louise parking lot before the masses of other visitors arrived; the focus of our day was entirely on a Pinterest-worthy “Tea Hut Hike”. Due to my incredible campsite finding skills the drive to Louise took no more than five minutes, and we arrived early enough to secure a parking lot just a few cars from the trailhead entrance. We packed my 66L Cold Cold World bag with the appropriate gear we’d need for a day hike, and though the bag itself probably appeared to be overkill to anyone walking by us, it served us well. I included a light windbreaker for myself, my camera bag with a few lenses, an extra liter of water for us to share when our primary ones ran dry, and the usual bag of minor medical supplies and a headlamp just in case. The snowshoe straps on the exterior of the bag worked phenomenally as a place to fasten my aluminum tripod to, and there was plenty of space left in the backpack to fill with Dani’s extra layers as the day got warmer. We made a final restroom stop in the gorgeous Lake Louise Fairmont hotel and made our way to the trailhead alongside the lake’s shore as hundreds of people gathered to take photos of the water as we had a few days prior.

Waking to the sunlight casting shadows of trees across the rainfly of our tent, I checked my watch to verify both the time and date. As I had suspected it was our last morning in Banff, and we had just spent our final night at Tunnel Mountain. After relaxing for a few minutes longer, we then ran through the checklist of breaking down the tent and packing our gear away for good, having spent five nights in a row at the Banff campground and living the luxurious life of leaving the tent pitched for days on end. Knowing that we had no concrete sleeping arrangements for the night we each took a quick shower before leaving the tent site and dropping our vehicle parking pass in a drop box as some informal kind of checking-out.
 
First up on our social calendar for the day was visiting the Cave and Basin National Historic Site, a site of natural thermal springs around which Banff, Canada’s first national park, was founded. Though depicted as originally being utilized by Native Americans present in the area, the first recorded reference from western settlers was in 1859. Twenty years later two men working with the Canadian Pacific Railway rediscovered it, descending through the narrow skylight entrance to the cave, then building a small cabin nearby and claiming it theirs for commercialization. Other community groups pushed against the men and asked for intervention from the Canadian government, and in 1885 an order from John Macdonald, the Canadian Prime Minster, reserved ten square miles around the Cave as the Banff Hot Springs Reserve; this simultaneously gave birth to the Canadian National Parks system. The admittance to the Cave was free, and Dani and I read the abundant signage and absorbed the gigantic murals depicting the discovery of the thermal spring before venturing through a low tunnel carved into the mountainside to see the spring itself. The smell of sulfur was overwhelming to my nose, and the dark environment made for a tough photography subject, but we lingered for a while watching the sunlight dance on the sparkling turquoise water before heading back out to view the rest of the museum.
 

A walkway outside the cave led us to a massive hallway with even more historic photographs and writings detailing the creation of the National Parks in Canada. We looked at countless images while a video played across massive screens overhead, then found a quiet room in a seemingly forgotten part of the visitor center where a 1958 film played detailing the efforts of the Canadian Railroaders, the men responsible for the daily operations of the railway. I never anticipated being so intrigued by this, but we ended up watching the 30 minute narrated documentary from start to finish before departing. In the courtyard outside the museum hall was a living scene depicting how a small established village may have looked while the railroad was being constructed a hundred and thirty years prior. Canvas tents were sprawled out with period-correct beds and desks inside, and two cast members from the Cave and Basin site were re-enacting a land surveying as a crowd of us visitors watched. The entire experience at the Caves was rather fascinating, and the cherry on top was seeing a Ford Model T truck outside as we walked back to the parking lot.

We spent the early afternoon indulging in all that the city’s downtown had to offer, beginning with lunch at the Banff Avenue Brewing Company. Settled at a 2nd-floor balcony’s bar-top table overlooking the main avenue of town, we got to work writing a dozen or so post-cards to friends and family. The streets were bustling below us and we made a million comments to each other about the pristine weather and incredible view of the mountains as we ate lunch, sipping some locally brewed hard ciders. Finishing up our last bites and last written words, we paid the bill and decided to explore the shops surrounding us. I found a t-shirt that wasn’t overly touristy, a shot glass for my globally inclusive destination-based collection, and an 8 oz can of ISO/propane fuel for our backpacking camp stove. Dani window shopped nearly every establishment on the street, then grabbed my hand and brought me into the Spirit of Christmas store to find an ornament for this winter’s holiday tree. By the time we were back at the car it was 15h00, with a half-hour drive ahead of us to the town of Canmore where we’d begin our afternoon traveling an off-pavement route I had read about on a fellow overland blog, Desk to Glory.

​The Smith-Dorrian Trail is a graded gravel route that runs 62 kilometers through Kananaskis, Alberta. While, in my opinion, it doesn’t hold a candle to the drive from Jasper to Banff, it does has the phenomenal benefit of being relatively void of any other people or vehicles. Dani and I turned off pavement we passed a large sign denting the “narrow winding mountainous road ahead”… had there been a camera in her hands at that moment, I’m sure she would have captured a look of childish glee on my face as I pressed the accelerator a little harder and the Jeep began climbing up the gravel to our first mountain pass. The road rose with the side of the slope, the small town of Canmore disappearing in the rear view mirror. As we crested the gap between two peaks our eyes found a large lake sprawled before us, a half dozen people swimming in the dark blue water. We continued on, knowing that there was limited daylight and lots of driving left before we called it a night. Our elevation continued varying as we traveled along, but stayed within a reasonable range of 6,000-feet. Pine trees towered over the road as we passed by them, and I decided it was an opportune time to stop and send the drone up for some aerial photography of the Jeep and mountains around us. Stopping alongside a massive and completely vacant lake roughly halfway through the trail I threw a telephoto lens on my camera and took some modeling/marketing photos of the Grand Cherokee to send to the dedicated and supportive off-road industry companies that have chosen me to represent their products. The scenes we were privy to are unlike anything I’ve found myself able to photograph back in New England, and I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to click away with my shutter. 

It took us a few hours to complete the Smith-Dorrien Trail as we stopped occasionally to soak in the feeling of being completely alone in the mountains. The sun began sinking in the sky as we progressed further south, dust kicking up behind us as the Jeep’s tires churned over the dirt and gravel road. Towards the end of the route we stopped on the side of the road to catch a glimpse of a mother and calf moose nestled back in the woods. I used my telephoto lens to capture a terrible photo of the young moose, but by the time I was able to grab it from my camera bag the mother had lay down on the ground. We hung around for a few minutes hoping she’d stand back up but knew we had over an hour of driving between the end of the Trail and getting back to the highway, so we pressed on. Eventually returning to pavement, we rolled through a stop sign and turned north onto Alberta Highway 40 to make our way back to the Trans-Canada route and return to Banff.
 
One of the most prominent things on Dani’s bucket list for our vacation was to complete one of the famed “tea-hut” hikes at Lake Louise. While we hadn’t been able to the morning we photographed sunrise there, I finagled a plan for us to be able to the next morning on our last day in the National Park. We had no definite plans for somewhere to spend the night, but I had done a bit of research on the same iOverlander webpage we used crossing the continent, and found a marked wild-camp site up by Lake Louise right off of Highway 1. The drive would take us another two hours to complete, and by the time we arrived it was already dusk. The site was a large trailhead parking lot with a clearing nestled back in the woods at the far end that overlooked the glaciers behind Lake Louise. Dani got to work cooking us a small dinner on the stove while I set the tent and got our sleeping gear ready, and by the time we climbed into bed it was nearly 22h30. Luckily for us the moon had not yet risen, and through the faint light pollution of the town below we were able to see the Milky Way stretching out overhead. I lingered outside of the tent for a few minutes with my camera and tripod to capture the scene, and was elated to find out just how well it came out when I viewed it on my computer - it is probably my favorite image from our entire trip. Below you’ll see it, our REI Quarterdome 2 tent on a cliff with the small town of Lake Louise, Mt. Victoria and her glacier in the background, and the Milky Way sparkling in the left side of the frame. It was quite the sight to fall asleep to, and I was thrilled with all we’d been able to see and do throughout the day. Our final night in the Rockies was being spent at an otherwise uninhabited campsite with the stars shining brilliantly overhead; it was the icing on the cake of what had been an amazing week and a half in the mammoth mountains of western Canada.

​With the day before having been such a long one, and our arrival back at the tent having been so late at night, it was no surprise that we slept in till nearly 10h00. I cleaned up the sleeping gear inside the tent while Dani went to take a quick shower, and then we traded as I rinsed off and she made us a quick breakfast of instant oatmeal. Once our cookware had been put back inside the Pelican cases in the Jeep, we made our way out of the “neighborhood” and back towards the campground’s main gate and turned down the now-familiar roads towards downtown Banff.
 
Over the past few days we had passed by the Cascade Gardens, acres of stunningly maintained flower gardens surrounding the large stone-made Park Administration building. We parked inside the gates and began our self guided tour, spending well over an hour meandering down the paved walkway through trellises, over bridges, and winding around the manmade waterfalls and ponds. The sunshine was brilliant and the skies blue with interspersed clouds, making the colors of the flowers pop against the green manicured lawns. I snapped the obligatory photos of the garden and Cascade grounds, then we made our way back to the car and down the road a few minutes to visit the nearby Bow Falls. The parking lot was overflowing with cars and the waterfront packed with people, but we lingered for a few minutes overlooking Bow River, the falls, and a few rafts out in the water for rent. Horses made their way past with riders atop as we walked back to the car and began speaking aloud about lunch.

 
Our first day in Banff we’d eaten by Two Jack Lake but had been rained out before any real exploration of the area was possible. Dani thought it’d be great to return to that area and drive around a bit more to get our bearings and see if there was anywhere fun or scenic we could eat. The drive back towards Two Jack Lake didn’t take long at all, and I decided we should approach counterclockwise to get a different view from the day before. We arrived at the shore of Lake Minnewanka as a pack of Elk made their way up the middle of the road, stopping traffic in both directions. Enjoying watching their movement from our vantage point in the Jeep on the side of the road, we eventually hopped out and explored the rocky path along the waterline of Minnewanka. The lake itself was the same brilliant hue of blue I remembered from the photos I had seen in photos leading up to our trip, expansive beyond description to our left and right, and stretching out for miles ahead of us. It’s the only lake in Banff National Park that allows motorized boats, and there were more than a few out and about in the heat of the afternoon. After fifteen or so minutes of checking out the area we concluded there was nowhere ideal to set up and cook lunch, so we got back in the car and continued along the Lake Minnewanka Scenic Drive road past the immensely busy beaches and boat docks, and on a few miles further to a small day-hike parking lot with picnic benches.
 
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We cooked a rice dish with turkey sausage patties and avocado, doing our best to keep the trash reigned in as occasional gusts of wind blew. A few minutes after we set up the stove and began cooking we were joined by a small and exceptionally annoying chipmunk who wanted in on our meal. Despite doing our best to shoo him away as we ate, by the time we were packing up he was actually following us to the Jeep and back as we packed up our gear. I was almost expecting him to hop right in the truck with us and come to wherever we were going next, though thankfully he didn’t. Turning back onto the road, Dani did some research on the iPad and found the nearby Mt. Norquay, a ski mountain a few miles outside downtown Banff with a winding scenic road that climbed three quarters of the way up the mountain to an open vista look-out. We began ascending the mountain as a light rain began to fall, the Jeep navigating the hairpin turns well as I kept an occasional eye on our strapped-down cargo gear in the back to make sure it wasn’t shifting as we went along. The drive to the top of the road was enjoyable as the mountain gave us a more and more scenic view as we continued climbing. By the time we reached the top the rain was coming down heavier, clouds having begun moving in over the mountains, so we sat in the car and enjoyed the view for what it was. We drove up to the “base” of the ski mountain itself, located some 6,000’ above sea level, and I showed Dani the motorized mats that are provided for the bunny hill slopes, as well as the snow-cat grooming machines that were parked in the lot.
 
We turned around and headed back down the road towards Banff as the sky got darker and the rain eased up, making a brief pit-stop at the famous “BANFF” sign on the town’s main road to take a photo in front of it. Parked on the side of the road with another half-dozen cars all with hazard lights on, we waited a few minutes before quickly setting up the tripod and snapping a picture of ourselves. It was a one-and-done kind of photo, with no time for a re-do as more and more people arrived to take the same snapshot. By the time we turned back towards Tunnel Mountain Campground it was nearly 19h30, late enough that we decided to call it a day. We sat in our camp chairs, hers a recent birthday gift I’d given with a large Florida State Seminoles logo on the back, and each worked on our computers. With an extension cord running into the Jeep for our laptop power supplies, we were truly the epitome of 21st century camping as she answered work e-mails and I edited countless photos and jotted notes about our adventures. It wasn’t the most abundantly thrilling day, but with all the non-stop effort put into the last few weeks, it was nice to have another relaxing day in gorgeous weather to explore this small town in the Canadian Rockies.

Our alarm clock was that of a small child screaming at the top of his lungs then bursting into tears. I referenced my watch and learned it was 08h30, a decent night’s sleep but from the way my body felt, not a restorative one. We emerged from the tent half an hour later to find the campground quieter and far more empty than when we went to sleep the night before. The large family behind us was packing up their belongings into the car, and the couples on either side were already gone leaving vacant campsites around us. The weather was a bit chilly, cloudy and in the mid 50s, and we decided that with it being a Monday we both had a little work to get done. We cleaned up our campsite and headed back to downtown Banff to find a coffee shop to work out of.
 
Setting up shop at the White Bark Café right on Banff Avenue, Dani ordered something coffee-like and I settled into a comfy chair in the lobby of the connected hotel to edit some photos and get a little writing done. She went straight to e-mails as I had a chance to look over the time-lapse images from the campsite on the Athabasca River the night before, elated to find that the Northern Lights had in fact been captured by my camera. I spoke briefly with some other photographers who were editing images in the lobby seats, discussing the wild fire’s impact on the visibility and sky, and how clear Jasper was further north. After an hour or two of working Dani and I closed our laptops and went in search of a grocery store for a few key gluten-free items we needed for dinner. By this point town was full of sunshine and quite warm, making me regret the jeans I was wearing. We toured through a few grocers until we found what we needed, then decided we’d find somewhere picturesque to have lunch.
 
About ten minutes out of town we arrived at the parking lot for Two Jack Lake just past the notable Two Jack Campground. Curious as to what parking was available we drove straight down the hill to the lakeside lot and found an empty spot that backed up directly to the water. I put the Jeep between two other SUVs and we got to work setting up our cooking station, the same Coleman grill we’ve been using all along atop a collapsible table. She had a toasted cheese sandwich with cucumber and tomato, and I made a bowl of spicy white queso rice with chicken sausage. Despite the gorgeous scenery there were occasionally massive gusts of wind, and we unexpectedly were joined by a Park Warden who arrived to issue a ticket to a family for operating an engine on their inflatable dinghy in the lake. The father got argumentative with the (armed) Warden and basically refused her ticket, so she issued him a court date and the whole thing turned messy quickly to the point where another Warden showed up. In the guys defense, it was a battery powered engine, not a gas one, but apparently they still frown on that. 
 
Having had enough of the scene, we packed up our lunch and cooking station and began a short drive around nearby Lake Minnewanka as a massive storm cloud blew in and soaked the world around us in torrential rain. We scrapped the remainder of our scenic drive, opting instead to return to the campsite and put a tarp up over our tent as an extra measure of protection against precipitation. Honestly I’ve been quite disappointed in REI’s Quarter-dome 2 for its moisture management during colder and more wet nights. We’ve had to use towels to mop up vast amounts of precipitation off the rain fly on multiple occasions, and even had to throw it in the drier on a delicate tumble dry at one of the Airbnb’s to make sure it was usable the night instead of soaking wet. I had an 8x10 tarp in the Jeep that was easily died between trees around our tent at the Tunnel Mountain campsite, and I’m now a little more reassured that it will stay dry in case of unexpected downpour.
 
With the sky still looming with darkness overhead and thunder threatening another storm, we decided that it was a great time to do laundry, and headed into town with two full bags of clothes and towels. I did some more writing in the Laundromat as the watched the new(er) JFK movie Jackie on her laptop, and within an hour we were folding our clothes and headed back to the campsite to cook dinner. I played the role of Dani’s sous chef as we made a ground-turkey taco dinner, and after the dishes were washed, dried, and put away, we retired to the tent in hopes of a few hours of sleep before enacting an ambitious plan to drive an hour north and photograph dawn at Lake Louise. Having spent the last years chasing dawn's colors and other epic early-morning photo opportunities, these plans are always great in theory, but don't always work out... so I’ll just say I have my fingers crossed we actually make it up there in time for the 06h20 sunrise.