‘Are we in Scotland?’ was one of the first questions I asked today. It was pouring with rain. Ali ran 20 feet from the car to a bathroom and came back drenched.

We hadn’t any plans today but we wanted to make the most of our last full day in Banff. Our first stop was Peyto Lake. Since it was pouring we sat in the car for half an hour looking through our photos of the trip so far and laughing our heads off about how cringe we are on video. (Ali has done a lot of vlogging…) When we got sick of waiting for the rain to stop, we just got out. It was a 10 minute walk to the lake and since it was raining we weren’t expecting an amazing view but the colour of the water was spectacular. As usual, a camera can’t really capture the intensity of it.

After that, we just kept driving to wherever life was gonna take us.

Ali wanted to drive up the ice fields because we’d heard great things about it. It was probably one of the most disgusting places I’d ever seen. The huge glacier was almost brown with dirt, the lodge for tourists was hollow and smelly and the food in the cafe was like IKEA food deep fried in the mankiest oil and then left stale for days. But we had to eat because it’d be a couple hours until our next step whatever way we went.

The people next to us in the cafe were eating spaghetti as if their life depended on it, slurping it up so loud and obnoxious. I think I have misophonia because I can’t listen to my own family eating like that let alone strangers.

We went outside to take a couple photos but it was freezing and the place looked like a building site, not a ‘gorgeous glacier’. But we laughed the whole way through it at how shocked we were at the monstrosity of this place.

On the way out, Ali said ‘right, I’m going to jasper.’ Jasper is a 3 hour drive from our hostel, and still another 2 hours to go.

As we drove, the sun came out. I think we chased the sun to Jasper because we never lost it. It was sunny the whole day despite the weather apps saying it would be stormy.

When we got to Jasper we bought 2 frozen pizzas and then left?! Honestly, this boy is crazy. He lives like time doesn’t matter, and is always on the go. We spend an hour max in each place and then he needs to see something else. Today was bursts of spontaneity and laughter.

I think we’ve spent too much time together because we don’t talk anymore, we just make funny noises and faces and gestures yet completely understand each other.

He looked at a map and chose a hike to do and we drove to Valley Of Five Lakes just below Jasper. So goodbye Jasper. It was fun.

We did a 5k loop of the 5 lakes which were ‘all different hues of blues and greens‘. We are clearly way out of shape by the way because we found the hike rather difficult.

On the drive back, I laughed so hard I snorted and then Ali just kept snorting and we laughed so hard for 15 minutes til we cried just snorting. Him deliberately and me just because I was laughing

Then we had the drive back to Lake Louise (sigh). We stopped once so I could pee and then another time because there were tons of cars just strewn everywhere on the road. Ali thought there was an accident but as we got closer everyone was stopping to look at…

A BEAR!!! Just hanging out on the side of the road. A brown bear. It was so cute, just minding its own business as everyone stood on the sidelines taking pictures and videos.

One of Ali’s goals of the holiday was to see a bear and about 20 minutes before we saw it, he was calling for all bears to come out which was clearly so cringe but obviously worked.