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We spent the next three nights camping in the actual township of Banff, and the drive there from Lake Louise is another stunner with mountains, forests, rivers, and wildlife all over the show! While ripping up the roads in the Mustang Lisa noticed this guy up on a hill. It's either a coyote or a wolf - anybody know for sure?

Banff is the largest town in Banff National Park and its focal point for tourists.		It's also a town for lovers...		...and grizzly bear deaths apparently.

The town is a great spot and very much aimed at the tourists, and there's heaps of hiking, biking, and skiing areas nearby. Banff was named after Banffshire in Scotland of all places - the birthplace of the former Canadian Pacific Railway director back in the day.

Our campsite had a lot of deer and elk wandering throughout, but we never saw any bears in there, and to be honest I was getting pretty pissed off and starting to wonder if we'd ever see any.				A major railway runs through Banff, and all the trains let their horns rip almost constantly to keep wildlife away from the tracks. It echoes brilliantly off the surrounding mountains and sounds bloody cool, especially in between the barking and howling of coyotes and/or wolves in the night :)

Overlooking the valley across the road from our campsite.		The following day Biker Barbie and I had a good burn through this valley and it was awesome! Big hills...

Rocky river beds...		Mud...		Yup, man and bike versus the great outdoors ;)

From Biker Barbie to Canoe Barbie, we later hired one for a couple hours and headed up the river - bloody nice!

		Yup, man and oar versus the great outdoors ;)		Along the way I spotted a low bridge, and rammed Lisa under it hehe.

Later that night we had dindins up the gondola atop Sulphur Mountain - 2,300m above sea-level - but probably needn't have bothered as we could hardly see a thing.				So close and yet so far!

On our final day in Banff we drove 150kms through neighbouring Kootenay National Park to Radium Hot Springs. More beautiful scenery, and along the way - finally - a bear!

This was one of several we saw eating at the roadside along the way. Word of advice if you're threatened by a bear in the wild: if it's black stand erect and intimidating and make a lot of noise to scare him off (they're just as scared of you as you are of them, hopefully); if it's a brown grizzly play dead and hope he loses interest fast! We never saw any grizzlies, just these big black cuddly things.

Radium Hot Springs are in a good little spot surrounded by steep hillside. We saw a pack of three gray wolves up the hill on the right but I didn't have the camera at the time - bummer.				Back on the road not long after leaving the springs these mountain goat bolted out from nowhere and we all came to a skidding halt hehe, especially the car in the background there.

The last two days were spent on the road driving the 900kms from Banff back to Vancouver. The weather started out good...		...but then just turned to shit for the rest of the trip with on-and-off torrential rain. Even trucks couldn't keep to the road. We had to be back at Vancouver airport by midday the following day and I was nervous about something going wrong on that morning due to the weather and us missing the flight. With that in mind we did 800kms in eight hours, stayed the night just an hour outside of Vancouver, and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. We'd clocked up 1,700kms in the Mustang over 6 days.

Just like the flight in, we flew out via Calgary and sat on the ground for another hour while more people got on.		Good views of cloud all the way back. Despite being an overnight flight, we flew so far north that it's daylight 24 hours a day at this time of year - bring on the jetlag!		Yeah, thanks.

Like I said this trip was partly for me to scope out Vancouver to see if I'd like to move there upon leaving the UK some day, and I'm thinking yes. Seems like a nice city, everybody I've ever spoken to about it has only had good things to say, and there's plenty of crap nearby to keep me entertained for a couple years (the longest I'll be able to stay on a standard holiday visa), so goody goody. With that in mind I'll probably go back to all of these places in the height of summer to get some better photos! :)

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He wasn't interested in me, and I assumed if it started to randomly charge at me that Lisa would notice ;) - Aaron

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