CR2013: Sulphur Mountain, Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum, and Home

Today, September 10th, Joan and I continued to substitute other activities for hiking, to ease the stress on her injured foot. We spent most of the day in Banff, starting with the gondola ride to the top of Sulphur Mountain.

In this photo we're watching gondolas arrive at the top of the mountain, having already gone up ourselves. It's good to arrive at the lower station to buy tickets no later than 10:30, as the tour buses begin to arrive then.

These gondolas hold four adults.

This photo covers the wide view from the gondola complex, starting with the old weather station on the prominence at the extreme left. Far below is the Banff townsite, on both sides of the Bow River, which winds around the prominent Tunnel Mountain. In the distance, at the foot of the far mountains right of center, is Lake Minnewonka.

Zooming in on the center of Banff.

On this side of the Bow sits the famous Fairmont Banff Springs resort.

There is a boardwalk to the old weather observatory, so it's easy to stroll over.

This sign describes how the tough Norman Sanson climbed this mountain for 43 years to collect weather information, starting in 1903. Click to enlarge.

A cosmic ray station was also based here between 1956 and 1978. It's gone now.

Looking back, Joan and I see that the gondola station has a UFO-like appearance. That's understandable, given that it was constructed in 1958-1959. It also underwent renovation in 1997-1998.

A view from the boardwalk down the Sundance Range.

Eventually Joan and I decided it was time to ride back down the mountain.

We then drove to the Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum. This museum is dedicated to the peoples and history of the First Nations tribes of western North America whose lives depended on the buffalo. Photography of the exhibits was not allowed, but I took this picture of the main sign. We enjoyed the museum, but don't need to make a return visit soon.

Afterwards Joan and I had a snack in downtown Banff and then visited the always-fascinating Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. It's easy to invest an hour or two there. We wrapped up our visit to Banff by checking out the Canada House Gallery, which always has lovely paintings, sculpture, and sometimes fabric work. Handsome stuff. Expensive stuff, deservedly so.

Then we drove back to Kananaskis Country and the Delta Lodge, for our final dinner and evening there. In the morning we finished packing and drove towards Canmore, stopping at the pullover on Highway 40 for O'Shaughnessy Falls. The falls are named after John O'Shaughnessy, who was the chief engineer for the construction of Highway 40, which began in 1973.

The creek begins at a spring high up on the mountain, and this 'forever-flowing' spring was a sacred spring for the Stoney Indians. It was said that neither sickness or disease would afflict those who used its waters.

O'Shaughnessy had the waterfall constructed to control the stream, and then landscaped around the waterfall and built a wishing well. Good work, John! Not every engineer would do that.

We deferred the walk to the top of the waterfall for a later year, and drove on to Canmore. There we visited the historic section of the cemetery. Here are laid to rest many immigrant miners and their families; a study is underway to plan a renovation of this section. We also visited several of the downtown galleries, which is especially fun because they all strive to distinguish themselves from each other. Another downtown stop was our second visit this trip to the Café Bookstore, which offers wonderful browsing.

The most important part of our visit, however, was to Le Chocolatier. Joan and I have stopped here every year since our discovery of this chocolate-lover's paradise. We bought truffles and bonbons for ourselves and our neighbors, which was a challenge in that Le Chocolatier offers about two dozen flavors to choose from between those categories. We also enjoy some of their specialty items, such as the hedgehogs. For meals on the road or on the trail, however, you can't beat their bars. We gave a boost to Canmore's retail sector here! On our way out of Canmore we stopped at a roadside park and each had a bar for lunch.

Then we ran through the routine of driving to Calgary, filling the rental car with gas, and checking into the Delta hotel at the airport, just next to the rental car return. The rooms are quiet but not huge, the dining room is surprisingly good for an airport hotel, and the airport departure level is just across the drop-off traffic lanes.

After Joan and I returned to Ohio we soon discovered that Joan indeed had a stress fracture in a metatarsal bone, as we suspected. Fun fact: stress fractures typically do not show up in X-ray images until the healing process is well begun, and are diagnosed by symptoms instead. The podiatrist remarked on how slim Joan's metatarsals were -- which is not an advantage! We concluded that the combination of a short training period (after our Arctic cruise), an aggressive hiking schedule, and cross-country rock-hopping was to blame, and we'll take more care in the future.

But, as always, our visit to the Canadian Rockies was a great trip, and we'll be back in the summer of 2014.