Road Trip

With Laura & Sarah both visiting we had to do something exciting at the weekend, so we went to Banff. Fortunately I had a flex-day last Friday so we could set off on Thursday 10th after I finished work.
As usual it was sunny and clear in Lethbridge, but as we headed towards Calgary the skies darkened, it rained and there was lightning every minute coming in great forks towards the earth. All 3 of us agreed we'd never seen anything like it before! When we stopped for a break at A&W the power cut out momentarily, but everything was restored seconds later.
There's so much on our Banff trip that I'm splitting it into sections. The pictures here are all taken from the car (it took 4 hours to get there so I spent a lot of time taking pictures from the car). The first is just outside Banff National Park as we were approaching Canmore. This was the best weather we had experienced outside Lethbridge - the skies here had cleared dramatically!
The weather on Friday was not great either, but the mountains looked great as wisps of cloud caught in them. You'll see in later postings that it didn't spoil anything for us. Saturday & Sunday were much brighter as you can see from the other "road" pictures. The middle picture is one of the many lakes on the Icefields Parkway heading from Lake Louise to the Columbia Icefields. The second is going back in the opposite direction.
Despite all the 'promising' warnings to watch out for wildlife, I still didn't get to see any bears on the trip!