We spent three weeks in a small town called Canmore, 12 miles outside Banff, and used it as the base for the central mountain day trips.  Banff National Park is Canada’s first National Park.   Unlike the US, the Canadian parks hold entire towns within their boundaries.  Banff is a spectacular town (A destination in its own right) and has a spectacular setting.

It has one of the grand hotels built by the Canadian Pacific railway where we enjoyed lunch one rainy day.  The town gondola takes you up the mountain so you can appreciate the the unending chain of snow topped peaks and the large number of glacial lakes carved out out of the countryside.  We took a boat tour on Lake Minnewanka, it is 22 miles long and very cold and deep.  The boat trip was was really cool.  The lake with the green tint is Moraine lake another glacial lake that we thought was particularly beautiful, with the mountains hanging so present.