Our first Canadian stop - The town of Banff

 

The name "Banff" comes from Banffshire, Scotland, the birthplace of one f the major financiers of the railwa.  Banff is a bit west of Calgary in the Province of Alberta.

In 1885 the little town of Banff was a stopping place along the brand new Canadian Pacific Railway called Sidding 29.  People came for the mineral springs that were here and were know to be medicinal.   The town is lovely and is so reminiscent of the Swiss Alps or some little German town in it's design and architecture.  It sits in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies - so everywhere you look the town seems to be surrounded by snow-capped mountains -  even now as the temps are in the high 70's and low 80's.

 

In the campground we stayed and in the area parks we are surrounded by the wilderness areas where wildlife roam freely.   So sightings were plentiful.....we saw this sign to remind us that Bears are around and you need to be careful with food outdoor.  Most of the signage here is in both French and English which I love because if keeps me practicing my French.

 

This was the view from our Tunnel Mountain campsite here in Banff.

 

This is Squaw Mountain in the distance that we can see from the Banff downtown bridge.

 

The Bow river runs through the town of Banff and there are great walkways all along the river.

Blanche and Lucy sit on the wall by the waterfall on Bow river.

 

As we sat by the river we watched the many touring rafts float by.

You can see the Canadian Rockies in the distance as a little tour raft heads up river .

 

The Fairmont Hotel is a beautiful hotel in Banff which - magnificent and huge.  

Both the interior and exterior of the hotel made us feel as though we were in  Europe.

 

From an overview on our drive we had a great view of the Canadian Rockies - Look closely and you can see the Fairmont Hotel at the foot of the Rockies.

 

Everywhere we went around Banff we could see the Fairmont Hotel.

 

The Fairmont hosted a stop-over for an Antique Car Rally that was on a Transcontinental Tour across Canada. This is one of the cars that were in the Antique Car Show.

This explains the Transcontinental Tour that the Antique Cars were participating in.  There were tons of beauties most were in the parking garage getting spruced up and cleaned up from their drive today.  A few were in the Fairmont courtyard for us to see and photograph.

 

We decided that this little number would fit us just fine.