I got up and Ali was making me breakfast. #husband2be We chatted about weddings over the greasy smell of bacon. Ali’s pal was leaving that day to go back to Calgary to start his semester abroad (so jealous) so we said goodbye to him. Now I’m Ali’s only company… Sorry mate.

 

Hylke recommended we check out Johnstone Canyon because it’s low down therefore unaffected by the smoke. This was probably one of the ugliest places we’d seen the whole week but still somehow beautiful. That’s Canada for you. I waited 10 minutes in a random queue where I got squished inside this tiny cave that had a small window to look at a waterfall that you can see from everywhere else. Ali stayed behind and saw TWO couples get engaged. Guess who had the better time?

Then we did the upper falls 2k hike which was all uphill. This was the view. I can’t tell if I was impressed or not…

We drove to Lake Louise to see if it would be any different from 2 days ago. The last few days, we have been so hopeful for changing weather. Everyone we talked to said not to have any expectations because it wouldn’t change despite Ali and I running outside in at 11pm counting stars and swearing that we can see shapes of mountains. We refused to lose hope. And this is why…

It’s only been two days and it’s lifted a lot! We have four more days so we are expecting great things.

Ali has always dreamt of canoeing here so we waited in line for about 45 minutes to rent a canoe on the Lake. We were one of the last people to make the cut and despite a thin layer of smoke, it was  a beautiful ride through the water. We laughed and chatted and crashed in to a ton of other canoes as though we were doing bumper cars on a fairground. “Go for 36, go for 36! Oh sorry guys!” (promise it was totally unintentional….)

When we got back to the hostel, we made some dinner and then sat upstairs on a couch and chatted for about 2 hours. After a long day of waiting, hiking, canoeing, we were hazy and tired and hyper. We laughed at everything from the size of my forehead to Ali taking my ring off and getting it stuck on his own finger.