sensory overload

Woke up to sunshine... what more could we ask for?

Today we saw some raggedy mountain goats, a BLACK BEAR, a humongous icefield caravan at the Columbia Icefields, the famous Lake Louise (still gorgeous and serene from when i last came here 17 years ago).

And then there were those awesome jagged mountains staring down at you in every direction, and oh, just a few billion trees scattered everywhere in between - for added effect i suppose, in case you weren't in complete awe already.

We had a picnic dinner in Lake Louise and was just about to go to the campsite to set up our humble home, but we were told tented camping was not allowed at all in the park because of
the big bear threat.

So the options were to find another pricey hotel/B&B or keep riding for another 60km to Banff to the Tunnel Mountain campsite, and hope that the tent camping ban wasn't in effect there.

So off we went, and actually it doesn't get dark until about 10pm so it was a really nice cool ride.... and oh, the smell of pine and cool summer breeze!

Because Banff's population is much larger, scaring a lot of the bears off, and due to the fact that the Lake Louise valley is much narrower, making it more difficult for the bears to migrate elsewhere, camping was allowed.

By 11:30pm, we had the tent set up at Tunnel Mountain Campsite. I'm sure it wasn't a full minute later that we were both already sleeping soundly.