Hey guys! Alondra (IG @londra__) here sharing finally sharing my post covering my trip to Banff. I originally wrote this for my friend Reagan's blog last year but I figured I should post it here too because content 😊 One of my besties Jennica (IG @jennica_lobo) had talked about going to Banff National Park for so long and honestly, seeing that place in person was also high on my own bucket list. One day when I finally saw the opportunity would be open for myself a few months back, we made it happen. Here’s how we did the damn thang: We bought our flights within a couple days of planning the whole thing. She was able to find the flights for us for $355 USD each, roundtrip. I had just happened to earn enough flight miles to cover the cost of my ticket, so your girl flew for free. Get those travel credit cards queens, but make good choices and don’t get crazy. Getting rewarded with travel perks? Hit me. We used Turo car rental app to rent a Calgary local’s car. It’s like an Airbnb but instead of renting their homes, people rent their cars! Ours cost us around $160 for 4 days, he met us at the airport and that was that! Split between the two of us, $80 each person is not bad for a 4 day car rental, shooooot. We flew into Calgary since that is where the nearest airport to Banff is and drove to our AirBnb in Waiparous Village. This village was lowkey in the middle of nowhere but it was halfway to Banff from Calgary and in our budget, so we booked! My birthday had just passed when we booked so my AirBnb gift cards helped tremendously with the cost. Hotels in Banff were not an option since they all seemed to be 200 and up a night, yeet! Our hosts home had no wifi but it was beautiful! It was on a large plot of land in the woods surrounded by green trees, we saw a family of deer when we reached her home. At night, since there is so little light pollution in the area, we could see more stars than we had ever seen in our lives! If you’re from a big city like me, this was so special. I will admit, it was a little scary since we were surrounded by nothing but tall trees and there was absolutely no light around us. Waiparous is about one hours drive from Banff so we made the commute for the two days we would be spending in the park. The scenery on this drive is gorgeous so it really didn’t seem that long, just make sure you’re in good company. I most definitely was! I would call myself somewhat of an over planner, and my friend Jennica is more so go with the flow. This balanced out for the both of us and she even set aside a day to get together with me and plan some things! (Jenn if you’re reading this, I appreciate you!) She knew the one thing she wanted to do was canoe on Moraine Lake and the rest she said would be up to me. Planning mode: activated af. I watched countless videos, looked through Instagram hashtags (#Banff #BanffNationalPark #LakeMoraine #LakeLouise #Alberta etc.), read blogs via Pinterest, searched in travel groups on Facebook, searched Tripadvisor, googled everything, and found some pretty dope things to do! I honestly don’t remember everything to the exact detail but I’ll try my best to recount our time there. Below I’ll include an itinerary for the folks who are like me, probably trying to plan a trip now. You do that research, yes. Itinerary July 21st: 6am - Fly out from LAS → SFO 7:30am - Land in SFO We got super drunk on our layover. Do not recommend. LOL 1pm - Fly out from SFO → YYC 5pm - Land in Calgary and pick up our whip, vroom vroom. We got some food, and stopped to get groceries and snacks in Calgary before heading out to our Airbnb, we stay hungry. Jennica spotted this pretty park on the side so we stopped to explore. 8/9pm - Nose Hill Park 10pm - arrive at Airbnb and KTFO. July 22nd: 6am - Head to Banff. #roadtrip 8am - Arrive at Lake Louise 10am - Canoed on Lake Moraine Hiked Rockpile 2pm - Shuttled back down to Louise to embark on the Lake Agnes Trail up to Little Beehive Trail 6pm - Headed to Banff town for dinner and home to our Airbnb for the night July 23rd: 8am - Head to Banff town for breakfast 10am - Shuttle to Sunshine Village to see Sunshine Meadow 2pm - Drove to Johnston Canyon to do the Lower and Upper Falls Trails 5pm - Headed back to Banff town for souvenir shopping and dinner 9pm - Headed back to Airbnb July 24th: 7am - Woke up to pack everything up and head back to Calgary 9am - Ate breakfast at OEB (best breakfast I have ever had, their butter is shipped straight down from Heaven itself, look it up) 10:30am - Turo car return and were dropped at the airport 12pm- Flight from YYC → SFO and then SFO → LAS 6pm- Touchdown home Nose Hill Park: A nature park where wildlife like deer and coyotes roam. We saw a deer in the bushes which Jennica named Canela, because we stan @BrotherNature in this house. The park sits on a hill so we hiked up to the top and got a beautiful view of Calgary. The sun made the park golden. Super zen and the perfect spot for a chill sunset. Lake Louise: We parked here since the Moraine lot was already full by 8am. People say the Moraine lot gets full by 6am so I suggest you go early AF if you’re trying to catch a sunrise. The sun doesn’t set during this time of year until around 9 or 10 pm so we figured sunrise would be best to try to make. Spoiler we actually were hella late and didn’t end up catching it, but that’s okay because things really worked in our favor this trip. The Louise lot is where we ended up parking after about ten minutes looking around. We found a family heading back to their car and Jennica walked with them so I could pull up and skrt into it. Once we parked we walked around the lake for a bit. There are canoe rentals on Lake Louise as well but we did not check pricing since we had our hearts set on Moraine. Next to Louise sits the luxury Fairmont Hotel, crazy pretty! We didn’t go inside since we were more interested in being outdoors, but I would check it out. After some sight seeing we got in line for the Moraine shuttle ($12 for 2 people) and headed up. The shuttle was about 10-15 minutes long on a school bus. So nostalgic, it felt like a field trip. Don’t we all miss those? Lake Moraine: The famous turquoise water actually exists! The water looks just as, if not more beautiful in person. It didn’t feel real. This is where we canoed. Luckily the line wasn’t very long the day we went since it was still somewhat early in the day. Guests of the hotel near the lake get first priority so if you think it will be a busy day, get there as early as you can! Canoeing here is $120 USD per hour. They have two and three person canoes so we split it down the middle. It was surreal and if you splurge on anything in Banff, this should be it. I legit shed a couple tears because I couldn’t believe we finally made it. There was this moment when a young boy across the lake let out a loud howl, and then Jennica howled back, and some people way across on the rockpile howled, and then a couple on a boat near us, until there were howls back and forth all across the lake. It felt like joy. This was life. Pure moments of light hearted, human connection. Rock Pile Trail: The rockpile trail is at the entrance of Lake Moraine and can be done in under 30 minutes. It is extremely easy to do. There are steps in the rock and you make your way up to a pretty viewpoint of the lake, it looks just like a postcard. This is the perfect place to take a picture. We witnessed a proposal on the lake from up top. We heard a man from a canoe yell “She said yes!” So if you by any chance know someone who was proposed to on July 22nd, 2019 on a canoe in Banff, please tell them I said congrats. I laughed when a girl not too far from us followed the proposal with “If I don’t get proposed to in Banff, I’m saying no.” MOOD. Lake Agnes Tea House Trail: I knew I wanted to do this hike from the second I read about a tea house high up in the mountains, sitting on a small lake known as Lake Agnes. The trail begins at the base of Lake Louise and you go higher and higher until you reach Lake Agnes and the cute tea house. The food was yummy, I had one of the best soups I have ever had. The tea house has no electricity so be sure to bring cash with you. We sat for a bit and had a quick bite to eat here before continuing. The people who work here stay up there for a couple days at a time, and then hike back down on their days off. They give hikers the option to carry trash back down the mountain with them to help out too! So cool. This hike was more on the moderate side for sure. It is an incline all the way up with a number of switchbacks, so bring lots of water with you and pay attention. Once you reach the tea house, there begins the Little and Big Beehive trails. We opted for Little Beehive since it was the shorter one and we were already dead af. Little Beehive Trail: Here is where sh!t got real. I would rate this trail much further on the moderate to difficult side since we accessed it via the Lake Agnes trail. Jennica and I both agreed it was the most difficult hike we had both done yet. Still did that though! The incline continued here and we began seeing less and less people headed up that way. This is the area I would recommend talking loudly and singing so that if there are any bears nearby, they’ll steer clear. I kept talking loudly to the bears like, “Yo we’re just trying to see this beautiful view so if you could just stay away, that’d be chill!” Once we reached the top of Little Beehive my legs were shaking but the moment we saw that view, I instantly got an adrenaline high. The view of Lake Louise and the smaller lakes we passed along the way was INSANE. It was all worth it. There was no one else up at the viewpoint so we had it to ourselves to marvel at. We both got dizzy when we looked down at the trees because we were sooooo high up at that point. The little beehive trail via lake agnes is a 9.0 km hike total, which is roughly 5.5 miles. Bring HELLA water, snacks, bug spray, bug spray, and bug spray. Those mosquitoes were not playing with us, I know we look like snacks but they FEASTED on that vegas cuisine. Call me a delicacy. Aye. Sunshine Meadow: Park in Banff at the parkade (which was FREE. Yes, you read that right homies, FREE. California who? We don’t know her.) just make sure to read the signs because I believe it is only for a certain amount of hours. Then take the sunshine village shuttle. There are visitor center tents set up in Banff to help you locate where these pick up spots are. The shuttle was so nice because we could rest up for some time and just chill. Did I mention the shuttle is also free? Yuh. So the shuttle took us to sunshine village where we bought our gondola and chairlift ticket. ($45 USD if I remember right, I think if you go on trip advisor it may be cheaper to get it ahead of time by about ten bucks.) Yo, this was my first gondola and chairlift ride ever and the views were spectacular. We first took a gondola for about ten minutes up the mountain, stopped where there was a store and place to eat, and hopped on the chairlift to the viewpoint. The chairlift was my favorite because the weather was so nice plus the VIEWS. We saw a family of deer when we got up to the top and made our way over to the sunshine meadow viewpoint. From here you can see a whole valley and that includes 4 or 5 lakes down below. I can’t tell you how amazing it felt to be there. The pictures won’t ever do it justice but that right there felt like living to the fullest. There are optional hikes from the viewpoint down to some of the lakes, but we didn’t have bear spray or a big group (there had been a bear sighting everyday for about a week) so we decided to head back to Banff to grab the car and begin our next adventure. Johnston Canyon: There are shuttles that run from Banff Town to Johnston Canyon but we arrived back in town too late to hop on the last one. It wasn’t too far from the town itself (give or take 30 minutes) so we just drove ourselves. There is a lower falls which we reached first, this was a paved trail for the most part so it was easy. We decided to continue going up to the upper falls (WOW) as well since we were looking for this giant boulder we had seen in pictures. We reached the falls and then headed back down to explore and we found our boulder. Mission accomplished! We also met a talented travel photographer there by the name of Eric. (IG @ericjwli) Check his pics out! We ended up walking back down the trail with him sharing stories, and then later on our drive back into town we ran into him AGAIN when we pulled off to catch a nice view. Tips:
Hopefully I can share more adventures with y’all in the future. Til next time! xo Alondra
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AuthorA young writer sharing adventures both in every day life and my travels. Hoping to cover the topics of wellness, lifestyle, and travel. I hope I can both inspire and help people live their best lives. Archives
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