Glacier National Park

I have visited many popular national parks like Yosemite, YellowStone, Zion, Great Canyon and Rainier, and Glacier was top of the list but somehow a trip never worked out. This time, after saying goodbye to our cousin in Calgary, we drove down to USA entering Glacier from the east side. We were wowed by the natural beauty and going to the sun road is totally worth the hype! We stayed inside the park at the Rising Sun Motor Inns and Cabins, which had a non-luxorious but beautiful setting with a view of huge mountains. We covered the entire park from there. We can't pick a favorite part of the park. The boat rides from Many Glacier took on Swift current Lake and then on Lake Josephine after a 0.2 mile hike were surrounded with beautiful vistas. From Lake Josephine, we hiked to Grinnell Lake which is about a mile out. We saw a huge deer literally 20 feet from us and a moose in the distance. We also went on a guided hike to the beaver pond loop where we saw meadows with beautiful wildflowers. On the last day, we went to Two Medicine which was another beautiful lake with mountains around it, straight out of a postcard!

Calgary, Banff and Yoho National Park

The larger area around Banff is one of my favorites in the world and yet we have explored so little of it. This time, we decided to explore Yoho National Park starting with Emerald Lake, then Takakkaw falls followed by a stay 20 miles from the town of Golden in the woods by a river. The next day, we did the Wapta falls main trail and the hike to falls as well as the view from the bottom was stunning! We again went to Emerald Lake for lunch as we clearly hadn't gotten enough of it. On the way back we went to Peyto Lake and Bow Lake each with their tremendous beauty and turquoise waters. We skipped rocks in Bow Lake which was fun for the kids. The icing on the cake was that my cousin who has moved to Calgary was with us with their family. Driving their big GM Escalade was also a lot of fun!