Day 8 - Friday (7/29)

On Friday we spent some time in the Banff town area. We later found out this was a good idea as this was a holiday weekend in Canada, so they expected a large influx of people from neighboring Calgary and beyond. We visited the Hoodoos area (very small, not worth it) and also drove and hiked the Signal Mountain area. We ate a nice lunch in town and then did a short, but rather uphill, not very good hike in the ‘C Level Cirque – Mines Area’. We next drove into the Lake Minnewanka area. This area was a very pretty area, perfect for a picnic. We did a nice walk around the lake to the Stewart Canyon Bridge and got some ice cream for a late afternoon snack. As in Glacier, there were quite a few bear warnings that caused us to take some shorter hikes. We caught a bit of rain while there but it was over with pretty quickly. We also stopped at nearby Johnson Lake and got the opportunity to see a beaver up close. He was just a few feet from shore and we were able to watch him for a good 20 minutes eating and trimming some branches that hung into the water. That was something rarely seen anymore in Wisconsin. We stopped back in town on the way back to our camp site to pick up some groceries and other supplies.