The following day we collected our hire car for the next six days. Bloody nice don't ya think (minus the rust ;)

Nah, today was my birthday, and so happy birthday to me - I hired this big beast! 2008 Ford Mustang convertible, only a month old and 2,500kms on the odometer (although it had a lot more than that after I got done with it).

4.0 litre V6 under the bonnet, but being a big heavy bastard (and an automatic) it wasn't as grunty as it looks (my Skyline back home would've pooped all over it) but nonetheless it was bloody nice to drive!

While jamming our luggage in the lack of boot space (or trunk space should I say), I noticed this inside hahaha! The cable connects to the boot (trunk) latch - I'll let you figure out its purpose, keeping in mind it is an American car ;)

We drove out of Calgary for the short 150km trip to Lake Louise deep within Banff National Park. The scenery started out pretty bland and boring...

...but before long the Rockies were upon us!

Don't expect a cup a tea.

And plenty of it! Thankfully I managed to avoid hitting anything and losing my insurance deposit on the car.

Most of the photos of the lakes within Banff National Park look like this.

But unfortunately, for us Lake Louise looked more like this. The problem was we were here about two months too early to get views like that on the left, but nonetheless the place was spectacular. Unfortunately the weather was far from spectacular and as a result these photos really don't do this place justice!

Lake Louise is 2kms long and 0.5kms wide, and surrounded by huge mountains and forest - it's abso-fucking-lutley stunning, and again I stress my camera can't do this place justice in such gloomy weather!

The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise - right on the lake and our accommodation for the night. Yup, happy birthday to me!

There are miles upon miles of hiking trails in the immediate area that surrounds the lake and beyond. Lake Louise is a really popular skiing spot as well, but we were a bit late for that obviously.

The lake is slowly but surely defrosting at this time of year after being completely frozen over winter, so not exactly swimmable either.

Vancouver has heaps of squirrels, Lake Louise has heaps of chipmunks hehe - and they're even cuter! Again they don't seem too worried about humans, instead cautiously wandering over for a good look (and probably expecting food).

Probably against the rules, I gave this little dude a piece of caramel popcorn that I was stuffing my face with, and he proceeded to stuff his too.

After walking the length of the lake we took one of the many tracks up the side of a mountain to one of the many other lakes in the area.

After much huffing and puffing we were up in the snow and found Mirror Lake - just a small one with nothing terribly exciting going on.

10kms south of Lake Louise is Moraine Lake. In the middle of summer this thing is completely full up to the tree line, but is currently pretty empty and icy.

Ice or not this dude didn't care.

Some people have too much time on their hands.

With the snow and ice on the surrounding mountains melting away the lake is filling pretty quickly, and if/when I do move to Vancouver I'll came back and check these lates out again in their full glory!