animals
Banff
Icefields Parkway
Jasper
Yoho

The trip:

A passenger on the connecting flight to Denver nearly died. Someone noticed an unconscious man a few rows behind us. They made the "is there a doctor on board?" announcement and a few doctors stood up to attend to him. They ripped open his shirt, pounded his chest, gave him CPR, eventually reviving him. This occurred about 20 min prior to landing, so our plane landed in a hurry - it was quite bumpy as it seemed the pilot was trying to land as quickly as possible. It was a hectic scene for a while, the flight attendants were running down the aisles. After landing they told everyone to stay in their seats so the paramedics could board the plane. The first paramedic yelled back down the aisle "oh! He's still alive, bring the stretcher!". They wheeled him off in a narrow wheelchair and everyone clapped. The passenger was alert but was a bit dazed.

When I first got on the interstate near Calgary the speed limit sign said "110 max" and I got excited (wow, Canada has autobahns!). Until I realized it meant 110 kph, which is around 69mph, doh. When you put the car (Explorer) in reverse it has some sort of radar distance warning. It would slowly beep as you got within about 4 feet of something then start beeping faster and faster the closer you got. Pretty nifty.

We stayed 4 nights in Banff Townsite, 3 nights in Jasper, 3 nights at Lake Louise. The drive from Banff to Jasper on the Icefields Pkwy was amazing - the travel book called it the "prettiest drive in the world". The 3+ hour drive has snow-capped mountains on both sides of the road, glaciers, numerous emerald colored lakes and rivers, waterfalls, and various wildlife near the road such as mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, etc. You could pull over just about every mile and take a picture, of course you'd never finish the drive! There was a lot to see, we didn't do everything we wanted to, even in 10 days. There was very little traffic.

I took around 5000 photos, at least until my camera broke with 2 days to go! The bottom 3/4 of each frame was black because the mirror was sticking. Fortunately it was a digital camera so I could tell the photos weren't coming out correctly. I got it semi-working for the last 2 days by using manual focus. The camera broke 91 minutes prior to owning the camera for a year, so hopefully it will be covered under the one-year warranty. [canon fixed as a courtesy repair]

Itinerary:
9/19 lake louise, chateau, moraine lake, bow valley pkwy south (1A), vermillion lakes
9/20 bow falls, golf course rd (elk), marsh trail, tunnel mountain dr, hoodoos, lake minnewanka, johnson lake
9/21 Mt. Norquay rd, upper hot springs, sulfphur mtn gondola, fenland trail, vermillion lakes sunset
9/22 Icefields pkwy to Jasper: bow lake, peyto lake, columbia icefields, sunwapta falls
9/23 Jasper: maligne canyon, medicine lake, maligne lake + cruise, lake edith
9/24 Jasper: patricia lake, pyramid lake, jasper/whistlers tram, cavell lake looking at mt. cavell
9/25 Icefields pkwy to Lake Louise: athabasca falls, goat lick, tangle creek falls, peyto lake, bow lake
9/26 yoho: takkakaw falls, emerald lake, natural bridge
9/27 lake louise, lake louise gondola, golden, moraine lake