Today we headed over to the Sulphur Mountain Gondola to get a nice bird's eye view of Banff and the surrounding mountains. We'd done this once before and convinced Tiffani and Deke and Kyle Bolstad that it was worth it. Luckily, they agreed.
We waited in line a bit to get the gondola up to the top (takes about 8 minutes to go ~5000ft). At the top there's a large building that houses the gondolas, a gift shop, a snack bar, and the panorama restaurant. From there you can walk a series of boardwalks/stairs to get to the cosmic ray station (that once was the highest elevation tea house in North America I think, at over 7500 feet).
Looking back at the main building:
The town of Banff, from above:
Me, doing what I do:
After hanging out gawking at the incredible views for a bit (well, and taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi, geeking out on our smart phones at the top of a 7500 ft mountain), we decided to have some lunch in the panorama restaurant and gawk at the views a bit more while we ate:
The food was actually quite good! Kevin and I both had prawn tacos and thought they were delicious.
After lunch we headed back down the side of the mountain. Gondola shadow selfie on the trees:
We're back at the campground now just chillin' a bit. I think we're grilling burgers tonight (with bacon and blue cheese, because how else are you supposed to do it if you're going to splurge on a burger?)
Tomorrow about half of our group (or more) heads south to Glacier/Montana, while some of us will head north toward Jasper on Monday. Our plan is to stop over one night somewhere along the Icefields Parkway and do a little bit of glaciering, and then arrive at Jasper on Tuesday.
I think we've got another group portrait scheduled for this evening while we're still all together.
Happy Saturday!
I’ve always wanted to visit Canada and all these lovely post are making my wanderlust go off the charts! Keep it coming!