The weather today was mostly cloudy and a little cool.  We drove around Lake Minnewanka and stopped at a number of viewpoints.

The lake is a popular diving destination, as the water level has been artificially raised a couple of times in history due to the power dams.  As a result, the lake level is nearly 100 feet higher than it was a century ago, submerging the original town, offering a lot of interesting sights to divers.

As we continued around the loop, we stopped for a while at Two Jack Lake, and watched a number of people swimming, canoeing and windsurfing.  They apparently were not deterred by the cold temperatures.

In the image below, Nadine contemplates crossing over to the little island.

Our next stop was Johnson Lake.

But don’t be fooled by the serenity in the picture above with Nadine sitting at the edge of the creek.  If you turn 90 degrees to the left, you see an entirely different type of wildlife… bus tourists!  There were about 5 school buses in the parking lot that carried the throng of people shown below, all milling about the shoreline in groups, snapping photos with their iPads.

Time to get back to town!

We stopped in to the Banff Park Museum, which was closing as we tried to visit the day before.

I was very impressed with this museum.  It’s not large, but they had a lot of excellent exhibits of the history of the park and its wildlife.  Even the history of the museum itself was interesting.  I recommend a visit to the Banff Park Museum to anyone who comes to the area.

We returned to the hotel to rest for the evening and dinner.  Below are some night photos from around the Banff Springs Hotel.

Here are Nadine and I on the stairs in the main lobby.

Below is a photo of the conference centre part of the hotel, across the driveway from the main building.

This is a picture of the main building, from the side, as taken from the steps of the conference centre.

The next image is of the side entrance to the Rundle Lounge.

On our final evening in Banff, we went to the Rundle Lounge for late night drinks and snacks.  Shown here is the stairway connecting the upper and lower levels of the lounge.

After dessert, we retired to our room for the night.

After yesterday’s mix of sun and cloud, today would turn out to be mainly sunny, but a little bit windy.  The plan for today was to leisurely enjoy Banff as we rest from the hike the day before.

Every year in Banff, we spend part of a day at the Willow Stream Spa at the hotel, and we had reservations for today.  After breakfast at the hotel, we checked into the spa for our treatments, and spent some time enjoying the relaxing water features before going into town to explore.

Shortly before leaving for our trip, Nadine and I watched the TV Show Burger Wars Banff.  We set out for the saltlik Steakhouse to try the winning burger from the show.

And here it is…

After a nice lunch, we explored the town to do some souvenir shopping.  Shown below is the famous Banff Avenue.

We stopped by the Banff Park Museum, which we hadn’t visited yet.  Unfortunately, it was just closing for the day, so we will have to try again tomorrow.  Instead, we walked along the river a bit before returning to the hotel for dinner (a light dinner–the burger at lunch was very filling).

Heading back to the hotel was a busy drive, and we got to experience rush-hour like traffic in the mountains.  I suppose that was to be expected since it was the Sunday of a long weekend.  Here is a shot of the traffic behind us on Spray Avenue as we make our way back to the Banff Springs Hotel.  I gather many weekend visitors who aren’t even staying at the Banff Springs Hotel drive out to see it.

We did, however, have a bit of entertainment on our drive back.  Below is a picture of an elk we saw grazing on someone’s front lawn.

Walking around back at the hotel, there apparently was a meeting of Porshe owners!  I don’t know where the hotel valet parked our rental Jeep, but it apparently isn’t among this group of fine cars.

Nadine and I returned to the Willow Stream Spa to soak for another hour or two before bedtime.