The Arctic air vacated just as quickly as it arrived. With an early afternoon deadline, we chose to spend Day 2 in the Rockies exploring the Banff area on foot. Sunny skies made for a comfortable temps in the 20's, but apparently did not encourage the Old Man to bring his camera. "We'll be back in an hour", he chimed.
Off we went . . . walking to downtown Banff, stopping for coffee, locating the outdoor ice rink (a converted playfield at the high school), and a place to rent skates (Backtrax on Bear Street). With plenty of time to kill before kickoff in Pasadena, Wilson suggested we hike along the Bow River. This waterway seperates the famous Banff Springs Hotel from the center of town. The waterfalls were frozen, framed by snowcapped peaks, the river flowing with minature ice bergs.
Taken from Amy's phone, since "you know who" left his camera and new fancy lense at the hotel on what would turn out to be the only sunny day of the our trip.
We headed further upstream to check out the xc trails at the golf course and discovered another outdoor ice rink below the famous lodge. With Ansel now playing the role of camera assistant, does it surprise anyone that one of Amy's gloves had gone awol? We retraced our steps back to the center of town and suddenly realized that 3:00pm was quickly approaching and we had yet to locate an establishment with a TV tuned to TSN2. The Winter Classic was dominating all screens in Canada this afternoon.
Amy suggested the Chili's only a short distance from our hotel and was rewarded with a TV already tuned to the Rose Bowl. Needless to say, the game did not go as planned. The Old Goat always said, there are two things in life you just don't drop . . .and one of those is the football.
Why didn't they just run the play?!? Even the Cougar was sickened by this lapse of judgment, for he had seen it before. Neither of us had the stomach to watch more football, so we bypassed the Fiesta Bowl and thereby gave up the only TV in Banff with college football.
Back we slogged to the towncenter, past the treacherous ice in front of the Shell station. Despite the afternoon beers, we are adjusting nicely and getting our sea legs back for walking on ice. Tonight's dinner destination was the Elk and Oarsman on the south end Banff Avenue. The ice was safely navigated back to the Rundlestone Lodge where a good night of sleep awaited. Maybe when we wake up, we'll read about how the Badgers got a second chance.
Day 3 in the Canadian Rockies took us to Lake Louise, for ice skating and xc skiing along with pics and video. Amy is much closer to Dorothy Hamill than Wilson is to Bobby Orr.
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