June 9 – Johnson Lake Trail

Since I couldn’t reserve one site for the entire time I wanted to be here, yesterday we had to move. It was not a tough move. The new site was just down the hill from where we were.

Yesterday this behemoth came in.

That is a custom made cab specifically for hauling this fifth wheel trailer. At first we couldn’t figure why they would want this setup and have to drive that monster truck around to the sights.

Then the back ramp dropped down and a full size SUV came out. Amazing! Although personally I would rather have our setup of the motorhome towing a car.

After our long hike at Johnson Canyon we took the rest of the day off, reading and relaxing.

Today the forecast called for mostly cloudy so I thought we would do one of the second tier hikes on my list. It was just described as a 3.3 km mostly level hike around a lake.

BUT when you combine deep blue green water and snow capped mountains all around and some sun it turned out pretty great. As a bonus we saw a bunch of tiny wild flowers.

We did the loop counter clockwise. The trail on the first side was mostly in the forest with a few viewpoints.

We saw some canoes and stand up paddleboarders.

Lots of tiny wildflowers.  This is arnica.

Jennie thought that this looked like a dog’s head.

For some reason the end of the lake had an artificial path.

The photosphere.

The picture I was taking.

The path on the far side of the lake was mostly along a bare hillside.

The flowers are tiny. The one above is the small blue spot in the middle of this picture.

I guess the lake level used to be lower as there were a lot of flooded tree that had been cut down.

We love the flower pictures.

We got a nice refection of the mountain with the paddleboarders.

Back at the start was a great place to have lunch and it was even the proper time.

The photosphere.

We headed into town to get some groceries and a fast internet fix. Needless to say, being a Sunday, it was very busy.

After that we drove up to the Banff Springs Hotel to check it out. Unfortunately there was a huge conference of media people going on so there was no parking and most the room were marked as being for private affairs. The guard at one of the parking lots reserved for the conference guests kindly let us park there as we would only be a short while.

 

Inside there was a gallery of old photos.  One was from the basin at the Cave and Basin we were at he other day.

Now.

It seems much larger back then.

Then home.