June 5 – Farmer’s Market and Stoney Lookout Trail

Today we first checked out the weekly Banff Farmer’s Market.

There were enough booths that we could find something to interest us. We didn’t buy much because we are in “the get rid of mode”, rather than the collect more mode. There were some interesting food booths that we would have bought from if had been closer to lunch time. Jennie does have a weakness for beef brisket so we did indulge in a very early lunch. It was very good and filling.

After a quick internet fix at the library, across the road, we headed up the very windy road to the Norquay Ski Resort.

 

The road gains about 1000 feet or 300 m in elevation. Partway up is a lookout with a great view of Banff and area.

The Stoney Lookout Trail starts from the ski resort parking lot.

It is 2.2 km to the lookout and gains 220 m or about 700 feet in elevation. As I said most of our previous walks have been pretty flat so we were pretty tired afterwards.

The description I read said that the trail climbs through the forest with some viewpoints part way up but you should really push on to the top because it has the best view. Well, there was one viewpoint partway up, it was so so and only about 200 m from the top so it was not a big commitment to continue on.

Most of the trail was like this.

Part of it was very rooted.

There seemed to be a lot of downed tree beside the trail.

The viewpoint partway up, was a somewhat obscured higher up view of Banff.

At last, we are on the top.

With a pretty great view to the east.

Although it would have been nice if that one tree in the middle disappeared. A little bit of terrible Photoshoping never hurt anyone.

The photosphere.

After resting for a rather long time we headed down.

On the drive back down we could see a bit of the ski hill that we skied many years ago.

And we ran into a mountain sheep or goat (not sure which) jam I assume they were licking the rock for salt.

Back at the campground it is kind of funny how many of these identical rental RV’s there are.

4 above us.

2 more below us.

I guess they have to check the license plate when the come back to make sure they have their own rental, after parking in town.