Canadian Rockies , Part 5

This will be my last installment and I'm really making it brief, selecting just the highlights.

Me, Mickey, Maxine, Sheila

Our next destination was beautiful Lake Louise.  This is the only picture that I have of me with my three travel companions.  We had a wonderful time together sharing many laughs and ooh's and ay's.

We stayed at another incredible Fairmont Hotel.

This was the view from the dining room where we ate the first night. More scrumptious gourmet food.

This was taken at Emerald Lake, not far away.  The hotel was almost built here.  I forget the reason why they went to Lake Louise.

A natural bridge seen on one of our side trips.

Our next stay was at The Banff Springs Fairmont.  It literally was a castle in the mountains. This shot only shows one section of the hotel.  It has had several additions over the years. The building wrapped three quarters of the way around that star circle.

This archway was to the right of the section shown above, connecting another section.  You can see the date when it was built, 1888.  According to our guide the hotel has been full ever since.

Downtown Banff was small but charming, full of little shops, restaurants and ice cream stores.

One of our big adventures was this helicopter ride.  Some of us were very nervous about it, but it was thrilling and afforded us phenomenal views.

Taken from the helicopter.  There's that beautiful aqua blue water again.

Again from the heli.  Doesn't it look like a stegosaurus?

Our last stop was Calgary, from where we flew home.  This was taken from the Observation Tower at twilight.  It stayed light until almost 10:30.

The Observation Tower taken from below.

And that's it, folks.  I'm sorry if I rushed you through the last part, but I thought you might be getting tired of seeing more mountains and dazzling scenery.  Suffice it to say that it was a great trip and I would highly recommend it to anyone.  

Where am I going next?  South Africa, I hope, but that won't be until 2015.