3 September 2023 Canada day 1 Banff

(6 hours) BANFF First day in Canada, and an 8 hours trip to the Rockies to enjoy the wilderness. Our bus tour guide was full of facts, some of them a bit dubious (though jetlag made it hard to tell). For example, Alberta has no rats, in 1950s they were all hunted down and exterminated. In Calgary the last rat found was 2013, he said. The Rockies are mostly limestone and quartz, and on the way to Banff, we passed the Hoodoos, columns of limestone carved by water, which are sacred to local indigenous people. First stop was Lake Minnewaka, which allegedly contains a monster similar to the Loch Ness monster. It was lovely, but as we soon found out, the tour was structured on the 'and if you think that's good, wait till you see the next place!' principle. The local ground squirrels are friendly, but there is a $25k fine if you feed them, or any other wildlife, and our guide says they may have rabies. Cute but deadly. Next stop was Banff, where our guide claimed the crows have been trained to pick up litter in return for food, by the rangers, who got the idea from Sweden. There definitely was a project in Sweden (and in a themepark in France https://www.popsci.com/crows-trained-to-pick-up-trash/ ), and Banff was certainly clean. Our next stop was Lake Louise. On the main highway we passed under a couple of 'animal highways', bridges with fences that guide the wildlife onto them, so they don't get run over/cause an accident. Lake Louise is beautiful, and can be photographed as if it's a wilderness, but in fact it's very crowded, with coachloads of tourists in quite a small space. I had a paddle in the beautiful blue water, painfully cold as 6 glaciers feed the lake. After that, onwards to Lake Moraine, which is high up and even more beautiful. I walked up to a viewpoint above the lake, which would have had a good view of the 'ten alps' and their glaciers, had the weather been less drizzly. I eventually realised that the feeling of familiarity I had came from it looking quite a lot like Aviemore! Rocks, fir trees, water, raining,,, The ground squirrels are cuter, maybe, but otherwise I felt quite at home, only the scale of the mountains was bigger. On the bus journey back over the plain to Calgary I hoped for a bear, but the most exotic wildlife I saw was a small herd of wild horses.