CANMORE AND BANFF

Saturday 2nd November
We dropped truck in yard early and picked up car.  We could'nt believe the weather, we'd had heavy snow overnite and it was still snowing.  We were off to The Rockies for the weekend and were worried due to the conditions if it was safe to drive there.  Dave started cautiously, there was'nt much traffic around and the roads were very icy. The car had four wheel drive and some of the roads had been gritted.  We made our way to Kananaskis Country, into the village, not much there so we went onto the ski lodge, obviously up hill! this was were the action was, people milling around with skis and snowboards, it was the first weekend the lodge was open, lucky! and they had the snow!  we sorted out some packages for the kids and had a mooch around, there was a cafereria, shop and lockers if needed.  We stayed in the carpark for a while and let maddy play in the snow.  We went on into Canmore, about 15 minutes further on.  It was a picture! very quaint, lots of different shops, with the snow it looked like Austria, wooden buildings and fir trees outside.  Two big supermarkets aswell, Safeways and Sobeys of which Jamie Oliver has been advertising just like Sainsburys at home.  So this would be our nearest town when we were staying at Deer Lodge, Bragg Creek.  We did'nt get to walk round Canmore as it was still snowing quite hard, we did pop into one shop "Snowy Owl Dog Tours"  we took maddy in with us, it was full of dog clothes and equipment for Husky dog sledging.  We bought maddy a new warm coat, red and white fleece with reindeers on, very festive!  We found out prices etc for our trip with the Huskies.  We then went looking for our hotel, not far from town we found the Canmore Rocky Mountain Inn, it was everything we needed, ground floor so we could just let maddy out and a large wood fire, very cozy.  Maddy had great fun in the snow, by the morning it was at least 10inches deep and came upto the top of my snow boots. After breakfast we set of for Banff.  It had stopped snowing so after driving through the town we parked up to explore.  We were near a large park with a river and band stand, also two museums.  The town had a long main street with so many interesting shops and places to eat.  We were so looking forward to bringing the kids here. I took some photos trying to capture the essence of the place.  All in all it had been a good couple of days.